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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIC 



A NOBLE ARMY 

A SHORT STUDY BOOK FOR JUNIORS 

BY 

ETHEL DANIELS HUBBARD 



Published by 

THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE ON THE UNITED 

STUDY OF FOREIGN MISSIONS 

WEST MEDFORD, MASS. 






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Copyright, 1921 

The Central Committee 

on the United Study of 

Foreign Missions 



VERMONT PRINTING COMPANY, BRATTLE80RO 



MAY 23 1921 

©CI.A614765 






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TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Chapter - Page 

I. — The Smoke of a Thousand Villages 9 

II. — The Boy with Five Talents 27 

III. — The King of the Cannibals 45 

IV. — The Hermit of the Himalayas 67 

V. — The Veteran of Van 81 

VI. — Service Stars 101 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Facing 
Page 

African Warriors in Battle Array 1 

Trekking in South Africa 5 

Crossing the River 12 

Schoolgirls in South Africa 16 

Carey's House at Serampore 21 

A Hindu "Holy Man" 21 

William Carey's Grave at Serampore 28 

A Familiar Scene to William Carey 28 

War Canoes of 1820 33 

Preparing Arrowroot in South Sea Islands 37 

Indian Cavalry on British Western Front 44 

A Hindu Wedding Party 48 

A Mountain Village in Eastern Turkey 53 

Armenian Children on Roof of a Mud House 60 

Brigands in Eastern Turkey 69 

A Native Cart 69 

Armenian Refugees 76 

Lotus Park, Paotingfu 85 

The "West Point" of China : 92 



The Son of God goes forth to war, 

A kingly crown to gain; 
His blood-red banner streams afar: 

Who follows in His train? 
Who best can drink his cup of woe, 

Triumphant over pain, 
Who patient bears his cross below, 

He follows in His train. 

A glorious band, the chosen few, 

On whom the Spirit came, 
Twelve valiant saints, their hope they knew 

And mocked the cross and flame. 
They met the tyrant's brandished steel, 

The lion's gory mane, 
They bowed their necks the death to feel : 

Who follows in their train? 



A noble army: men and boys, 

The matron and the maid, 
Around the Saviour's throne rejoice, 

In robes of light arrayed. 
They climb the steep ascent of heaven 

Through peril, toil and pain; 
O God, to us may grace be given 

To follow in their train. 




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A NOBLE ARMY 

Introduction 

IN THIS BOOK for boys and girls we are to think 
especially of the courage and strength of our lead- 
er, Jesus Christ, and of those men and women 
who have followed Him in various forms of service. 
We speak of Jesus as a tender shepherd, a teacher, 
a healer, a preacher, a friend of the weak and helpless 
and the sinful, a lover of children, a brother of the 
working man, working with his own hands as a car- 
penter, a beloved guest in the homes of men and 
women. As a boy he enjoyed the things that you 
enjoy. He loved to be out of doors, by the sea, in 
boats, or out on the mountains. He stood for fair 
play and honesty, kindness and neighborliness. He 
was obedient, faithful, brave. When He died and 
rose again and went back to His Father, He left 
those who had known Him and loved Him to "carry 
on" His work and sacrifice. 

There have never been enough people to do this, 
but some have been brave and faithful and we find 
little groups of them all over the world today. Some 
are in our own country trying to make it a good and 
happy place for men and women and children to live 
in. They are doing these things that Jesus did be- 
cause His spirit is in them. 

Some of His soldiers have gone to the front and 
are working as Robert and Mary Moffat, Carey 
and Paton worked. Some have been in His Red 
Cross department, in the medical work, like 
Dr. Raynolds; some have taught the lepers, like 
Mary Reed; some have died for Him, like Mary 



6 A Noble Army 

Morrill and some are fighting on like General Feng. 

These men and women have won their stars on 
the service flag of the church which you will find on 
the cover of this book. Most of them are gold stars 
now and we need new recruits to fill the vacant 
places. 

We hope there will not be another war, for war 
has meant much sorrow, loss and suffering, with 
crippled men, starving children, broken-hearted 
women. Yet there must always be war against sin to 
save not only our own country but all the world 
from evil. This war nust be won by Jesus and His 
volunteers. How many can He depend on for His 
army? Think how many men enlisted in the war 
from your church and town, and have their stars on 
the service flag. Then think of this other service 
flag and count those who have enlisted in mission- 
ary service from your church or town. You will not 
find so many stars, perhaps there are none at all, and 
that is the reason why, as you study this year the 
lives of these brave men and women who tried to do 
what Jesus did, you may like to decide what you are 
going to do with your life. Jesus settled that ques- 
tion when he was twelve years old. It was to be His 
"Father's business." Many boys think that they 
may go into business with their fathers. It may be a 
good thing to do if your father needs you, but sup- 
pose you think also of the great business of serving 
the world which your Heavenly Father has under- 
taken and remember that He needs you for "He 
has no hands, but your hands, to do His work today/' 

As you study this book remember Jesus who led 
these men and women into service in all the world 



Introduction 7 

and gave them power to fight hard battles courage- 
ously, and as you realize the great need of such men 
and women in this world today, make a service flag in 
your society and give it to your church, praying 
that there may be some stars on it soon and a few 
years later when you have finished your training 
perhaps there will be more. 

Lucy W. Peabody, 
Chairman Central Committee, 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

For help in compiling these biographies 
the author is indebted to the following per- 
sons: Mr. W. M. Danner of the American 
Mission for Lepers, 156 Fifth Avenue, New- 
York, for records of the life of Mary Reed; 
Dr. James L. Barton for access to the story 
of George C. Raynolds; Dr. Cornelius H. Pat- 
ton for the concluding narrative of the series, 
facts of which he himself secured on a recent 
trip to China. 



CHAPTER I. 

The Smoke of a Thousand Villages 

"In the morning sun I have seen the 
smoke of a thousand villages where no 
missionary has ever been. 7 ' 

Robert Moffat. 



CHAPTER I. 

The Smoke of a Thousand Villages 

One summer evening a boy of nineteen went 
whistling along a country lane in England. Hedge- 
rows bordered the way, and trees and shrubs grew 
in graceful profusion. Stirred by the beauty of the 
sunset hour the boy slackened his stride and fell to 
dreaming. The day's work was done; he was going 
into town to seek adventure; life loomed big and in- 
teresting as it always does at nineteen. Within his 
grasp was a piece of good fortune, for a new and more 
responsible position had just been offered him, 
gratifying to his pride. With a glow of satisfaction 
over his good luck and the zest of life in general, he 
crossed the bridge which led into town and came to a 
sudden standstill before a poster which hung by the 
roadside. 

What was there about that poster to arrest a boy's 
gaze and hold him rooted to the spot? No baseball 
game, cricket match, or county fair! No war poster 
to allure men and boys to the battlefront! No, only 
the notice of a missionary meeting in the Guild Hall 
at Warrington, and the date already past. What 
curious spell did the bygone event exert? Forgotten 
was the boy's errand, forgotten his dreams, as he 
stood wondering why the words should stir him so 
strangely. What hidden memories would they 
evoke? Suddenly the scene changed and instead of 
the sunny English meadows he saw the bleak little 
Scotch village where he used to live, heard the north 
wind whistle around the cottage walls, felt the 



io A Noble Army 

knitting needles in his hands and the old sense of re- 
bellion at the task he was set to perform, a task fit 
for girls only, and looked up into his mother's sternly 
beautiful face as she gathered her little brood about 
the fireside for the bedtime stories: stories about the 
missionaries, the Moravian missionaries in Green- 
land and Labrador and the valiant deeds they did. 
And here was this meeting with its stories of present- 
day missionaries! Could it be — was it possible that 
God meant to call him to become a missionary as he 
had called the young men of the Moravian church 
years before? 

From that night, at his day's work or in the evening 
leisure over his books, the boy was haunted by the 
conviction that he must become a missionary: he was 
puzzled by the problem how could he become a 
missionary? By vocation he was a gardener, not a 
scholar, and a missionary must be a scholar, so he had 
been told, with a university degree, or a special 
training like that of doctor or preacher. How was he 
to meet such requirements? He had been only at 
the parish school at home, where "Wully" Mitchell 
taught the catechism to his beginners' class in read- 
ing, at the school in Falkirk where he had learned a 
little bookkeeping, geography, and astronomy, and 
later to evening school where he had studied Latin. 
At fourteen he had been apprenticed as gardener, 
and had begun work at four in the morning, even 
during the freezing Scottish winter, when he had to 
rap his knuckles against the handle of the spade to 
bring feeling into them. To be sure, he could have 
had a longer school career if he had not run away and 
gone to sea at the age of ten, but that adventure 



The Smoke of a Thousand Villages 1 1 

was too exciting altogether to regret. Moreover, it 
afforded him a clue to solve his present enigma, how- 
to become a missionary. Go to sea as a sailor, and 
be dropped upon some distant shore where he could 
stay and teach the people about the dear Person 
who had come into his life with such redeeming 
power! 

One day, not long after the experience on the 
Warrington road, the same boy, Robert Moffat by 
name, accompanied by his chum, Hamlet Clarke, 
walked to the city of Manchester to attend some 
Methodist meetings. Scarcely had they arrived in 
town when Robert caught sight of a name which 
gave him a thrill of recollection. It was the name 
he had read on the poster, Rev. William Roby! 
Of course the boys must go at once to hear him speak, 
and the next morning Robert must drag his compan- 
ion to the man's very door while he tried to muster 
courage to go inside and ask his momentous question. 
Twice he strode up to the door only to lose nerve and 
retreat ignominiously to his friend on the sidewalk. 
At the third trial he lifted the knocker and waited, 
thinking that if he had a thousand pounds he would 
give them all to hear it said that Mr. Roby was not 
at home. Then he would go away and never again 
be trapped into such a presumptuous act. But the 
door opened, a maid ushered him into the parlor, and 
he listened with thumping heart to an approaching 
step in the hall. A friendly looking man entered 
the room and gripped the hand of his young visitor. 
It was not so hard to tell that man the reason of his 
coming, though he carefully omitted the story of the 
poster. Mr. Roby listened with interest, asked a 



12 A Noble Army 

few telling questions, and promised to consult the 
directors of the London Missionary Society to see if 
they would appoint Robert Moffat a missionary. 

The answer was slow in coming, slow at least to 
the eager spirit of a boy. When it came, it was a 
bomb of disappointment. "They have so many ap- 
plications for missionary work," wrote Mr. Roby, 
"they cannot receive them all and are therefore 
obliged to select those who possess the most promis- 
ing requirements." Of course he might have known it 
would end that way. He had no "promising re- 
quirements," none whatever, save an irrepressible, 
yearning to be a missionary. 

"Nevertheless," continued the letter, "will you 
not come to Manchester and let me place you in a 
situation near by, that I may examine you as to your 
fitness for missionary work?" 

With his future prospects a blank before him, 
Robert set out for Manchester to trust his fortunes 
in the hands of the man to whom he had been so 
singularly guided. After a day's fruitless search for 
a vacant position, they were near discouragement 
when Mr. Roby thought of a friend of his who had a 
large nursery garden a few miles outside the city. 
Opportunely, Mr. James Smith of Dukinfield had 
driven to town that very day, and, when approached, 
readily consented to give Robert employment. 

Now in the comfortable homestead at Dukinfield 
there lived a blue-eyed girl, the idol of her father's 
house and the moving spirit in the neighborhood life. 
Across the hearth those winter nights Robert MofTat 
glanced furtively at Mary Smith as she sat by her 
work table, fingers flying and eyes dancing with a 




CROSSING THE RIVER 
In Canoe Hollowed out of a Tree 



The Smoke of a Thousand Villages 13 

merry light. Mary had the gift of nimble speech, 
while Robert's tongue was slow and shy. But in the 
springtime when daffodils blossomed in the meadows, 
he had found words to tell the girl how precious she 
had become, more than all the world beside. They 
had long talks together in the garden and under the 
hawthorn trees in the lane, when Mary told of her 
boarding school days at Fairfield in the Moravian 
settlement there, and Robert spoke of the stories his 
mother used to read about the brave Moravian mis- 
sionaries. Both had caught the spell of those heroic 
lives and wished themselves missionaries, Mary as 
well as Robert, and even before Robert had come in- 
to her life with such awakening power. Could they 
not go together to some foreign land whenever the 
society in London should decide to accept them? 

On a day in early summer came the exciting mes- 
sage that Robert Moffat had been approved by the 
directors and would soon be appointed a missionary. 
It was Mr. Roby who had persuaded them to accept 
his "bonnie laddie," as he fondly called him. With 
the great good news came a terrible thud of disap- 
pointment, for Mr. and Mrs. Smith decided they 
could not possibly let their only daughter go thou- 
sands of miles away from home into a wild, savage 
country, from which she would most likely never re- 
turn. "It would be worth a thousand lives to go," 
declared Mary rapturously, but with stern, sad faces 
her father and mother said a final "no." 

With a heavy weight upon his heart Robert Moffat 
left Dukinfield to lodge near Mr. Roby in Man- 
chester, that he might receive instructions before he 
went to London to interview the directors of the , 



1 4 A Noble Army 

missionary society. That interview over he would 
sail at once for the country they should designate. 
There was one last trip to Scotland to the cottage by 
the Firth of Forth where a dark-eyed mother proudly 
bade her son good-by, knowing her own prayer was 
answered in this difficult separation. Out among the 
trees and flowers at Dukinfield, Mary Smith took 
up her cross of loneliness as she watched her lover 
depart. "Impelled by feelings I cannot master, 
held back by ties I dare not break." That was her 
dilemma as she herself phrased it. 

It was in October of the year 1816 that Robert 
Moffat went on board the ship "Alacrity" at Graves- 
end and began the slow, slow voyage which the 
ship's name belied, a voyage so long that the length 
of two continents was traversed before the final port 
was reached. What traveller after five days on ship- 
board does not rush eagerly on shore, glad to find 
himself on the dear brown earth once more! What 
words can describe the feelings of a person who comes 
to land after eighty-six days, almost a quarter of a 
year, on a cramped, crowded sailing vessel whose 
speed limit is five miles an hour! No wonder there 
was excitement on board when the ship sailed into 
Table Bay and the white houses of Cape Town came 
into view, at the base of the great square mountain 
flanked by the two sharp peaks. Yes, it was Cape 
Town, that historic spot at the southernmost point 
of Africa, where Robert Moffat landed, and from 
which he set forth some months later on the first of 
his many journeys in an African ox-cart. This 
mode of travel is called "trekking," and, were it not 
for the snail pace, fifteen miles a day, and a few 



The Smoke of a Thousand Villages 15 

other drawbacks, it might be a jolly, gypsy expe- 
rience. At any rate, it was charged with adventure. 
The cart was considerably larger than the prairie 
schooner of the American northwest, with huge 
wheels bound by heavy iron rims. It was drawn by 
several yoke of oxen whom the "crew" of black men 
spurred into action with their long whips and thongs 
fastened to the horns of the leaders. Deep sand, 
blazing heat, a mad search for springs of water to 
quench the thirst of men and beasts, the howl of 
lions — these were some of the accompaniments of 
travel in an African ox-cart. 

At every Boer homestead at which Robert Moffat 
stopped he was greeted with horrible stories of the 
fate that was sure to befall him beyond the borders 
of Cape Colony. There was a notorious brigand 
north of the Orange river, whose desperate deeds had 
become the terror of every household. He was an 
outlaw, upon whose head a price had been set by the 
government, but whom no commandos could cap- 
ture. He would speedily make an end of the young 
Englishman who was on his lonely way to the chief- 
tain's kraal. "He will strip off your skin and make 
a drum of it to dance to," declared one Dutch farmer. 
"He will make a drinking cup of your skull," an- 
nounced another. Nothing daunted by these grisly 
predictions, Robert Moffat pursued his way until he 
came to an endless stretch of deep, hot sand, a real 
African desert. There the oxen stampeded and ran 
away to escape the heat and thirst; there, with a 
single black companion, Robert waited three days 
while the other two men took the remaining oxen to 
shelter and brought relief. They built a fire of dry 



1 6 A Noble Army 

grass to cook what little food they had and they went 
twice a day to the nearest mountain for water. The 
loneliness was maddening. No human being ap- 
peared in sight and no beast of prey, though they 
could hear the lions roaring in the distance. In that 
inaccessible desert in the African interior, what 
tantalizing thoughts came, do you suppose, to the 
mind of the missionary? He was a very young man, 
barely twenty-two, and here he was six thousand 
miles from the stone house in Dukinfield, the dearest 
spot on earth, with only an ox-cart and a sailing 
vessel to span the awful distance. 

After four months of trekking, the ox-cart crept 
into the village of huts, shaded by mimosa trees, the 
lair of Afrikaner, the outlaw. An hour of suspense 
followed before the chieftain came forth to greet his 
guest and direct the women to build him a house of 
sticks and straw. Quickly the circle was drawn, 
the poles pounded into the ground, straw mats 
stretched over them and fastened down, and in the 
space of a few minutes the dwelling was complete. 
In that flimsy native hut Robert Moffat spent some 
troubled days, for at first Jager Afrikaner, his brother 
Titus, and all the tribe were suspicious and unfriendly 
toward the newcomer. But the newcomer promptly 
set to work to prove his right to remain among them. 
He began to teach the children three or four hours a 
day and to hold religious services night and morning. 
A hundred children flocked to his school, clad in 
their dirty karosses of sheepskin, and to the daily 
services came the chief himself with unfailing regu- 
larity. What possessed this heathen chieftain, the 
brave of a hundred battles? Had something be- 




SCHOOL GIRLS IN SOUTH AFRICA 
Newly Arrived from their Native Kraals 



The Smoke of a Thousand Villages 17 

witched him? Instead of calling his warriors to 
fight or plunder the enemy's cattlefold, he sat in the 
shadow of a great rock, reading, reading, and it was 
always the same little thumb-marked book that he 
read, a Dutch New Testament. At night he sat 
upon a stone outside the white man's hut talking 
often until break of day about the great questions 
of the meaning of life, questions which the little book 
had roused. Never was man more completely 
changed. Instead of murder and pillage, he carried 
sympathy and aid to every hut where need prevailed; 
instead of inciting the tribes to fight, he begged them 
to make terms of peace; and once, upon allusion to 
his former life, he broke down and cried like a child. 
It was the Christian Gospel which had entered the 
life of the savage African and made him into a peace- 
ful, reasonable man, the devoted friend of the Eng- 
lish missionary. Two men had come from the ends 
of the earth, in experience as well as geography, but 
in the bond of a common faith they met as comrades. 
After a year in Afrikaner's kraal, Robert Moffat 
made a proposition to which the chief listened in 
blank amazement. He proposed no less than a trip 
to Cape Town and that Afrikaner should accompany 
him. "I had thought you loved me," demurred the 
bewildered chief, "and do you advise me to go to the 
government to be hung up as a spectacle of public 
justice? Do you not know that I am an outlaw, 
and that one thousand rix-dollars have been offered 
for this poor head?" But the missionary was sure 
he could prevent such a dire catastrophe and be- 
lieved that marvellous results would follow Afri- 
kaner's presence in Cape Town. So it came about 



1 8 A Noble Army 

that two travellers set forth from Great Namaqua- 
Iand to go to the leading city of the Colony, the 
white man assuming the role of chief and the real 
chief that of servant, to escape detection. 

All along the way Robert Moffat was greeted with 
exclamations of surprise from Dutch farmers who 
had heard reports of his death at the hand of Afri- 
kaner. "Don't come near me," cried one in con- 
sternation. "It is your ghost; you have long ago 
been murdered by Afrikaner." Upon protesting 
that he was no ghost, but a living man, the farmer 
was led into startled talk, declaring he could believe 
anything except that Afrikaner had become a Chris- 
tian man. "There are seven wonders in the world," 
said he, "that would be the eighth." 

"This, then, is Afrikaner," announced the mission- 
ary, pointing to the man of gentle bearing who stood 
beside the wagon. The farmer stared as if he had 
seen a veritable ghost, and then raising his eyes said 
with reverence, "O God, what a miracle! What 
cannot Thy grace accomplish!" 

At Cape Town, Afrikaner's presence created no 
little stir. Here was the man whose lawless deeds 
had been common talk for twenty years, and now he 
was received by the very governor who had former- 
ly ordered his arrest. A present of a fine new wagon 
was given him and the one hundred pounds sterling 
once offered for his capture was expended in gifts for 
himself and his people. The missionary's tactics 
had been more than vindicated. He had produced 
living evidence of the value of Christian missions. 
Meantime into Robert Moffat's life came a sur- 



The Smoke of a Thousand Villages 19 

prise as great as the appearance of Afrikaner in 
Cape Town. A letter was placed in his hand which 
caused a quick palpitation of interest. It was from 
Mary Smith and it said that her parents had at last 
given their consent and she was free to come to him 
in South Africa. The rebound of joy was almost too 
great for endurance, for her very last letter had crush- 
ed his hope of her ever being allowed to join him. 
And now this ecstacy of expectation ! Eight months 
had to be lived through before another slow ship 
came to port bringing the English girl who had 
journeyed those thousands of miles from home to 
join her lover. In her girlish presence she stood be- 
fore him, the figure that had tantalized his inner 
vision during so many lonely hours. The meaning 
of that reunion may better be imagined by those 
who have the gift to feel a vital situation, rather than 
described in words. In St. George's Church, Cape 
Town, the two were married on the second day after 
Christmas in the year 18 19, and soon after New 
Year's day they started on their bridal trip in an ox- 
cart for the new home in Bechuanaland, seven hun- 
dred miles away. 

Housekeeping in an African kraal was a comic and 
a tragic matter. At all hours of the day, curious 
visitors poked their black heads into the hut of the 
foreigners, entered at will and seized any object 
they chanced to fancy. Their naked bodies were 
smeared with grease and red ochre which came off 
on everything they touched. And their moods were 
as perverse as their minds were inquisitive. One 
day Mary Moffat politely asked a native woman to 
leave her outside kitchen, whereat the woman snatch- 



20 A Noble Army 

ed a piece of wood to hurl at her head. Another 
time in another year after the first child had come 
into the missionary home, a black girl took offense at 
some reproof and threw the baby across the room at 
its mother's head. These were samples of African 
humor which reached its climax that noonday when 
the chief Mothibi and his attendants approached the 
hut with menacing looks. Going forth to meet them, 
Mr. Moffat and Mr. Hamilton, his companion mis- 
sionary, quietly awaited their pleasure. The spokes- 
man stepped forward, spear quivering in his hand. 
"The missionaries must leave the country," he pro- 
claimed. "If they disobey, violent measures will be 
adopted." Then Robert Moffat straightened him- 
self to the full height of his tall figure and made re- 
ply: "If you are resolved to rid yourselves of us, you 
must resort to stronger measures, for our hearts are 
with you. You may shed blood or burn us out. 
We know you will not touch our wives and children." 
With her baby in her arms, Mary Moffat stood in 
the doorway listening to her husband's daring words 
and watching the chief's face as he turned to his 
followers and dubiously shook his head. "These 
men must have ten lives," said he, "since they are so 
fearless of death; there must be something in im- 
mortality." With this conclusion, chief and war- 
riors turned and went away. 

For seven years Robert and Mary Moffat made 
their home in the Bechuana village without winning 
a single convert to the Gospel they loved. "Maka 
hela" (lies only) , cried the people in contempt. There 
were no idols to be found among this tribe, not even 
a wayside shrine, nor a sacred stream or tree, no 




CAREY'S HOUSE AT SERAMPORE 




A HINDU "HOLY MAN" 

This Worshipper Can Be Seen from Window of Carey's 
House 



The Smoke of a Thousand Villages 21 

legends of ancient origin, no religious traditions or 
customs for the missionary to use as point of contact 
for his message. But a Christian home was an irre- 
sistible witness of higher truths to the heathen kraal. 
They could not withstand its appeal nor yet the 
brotherly spirit of the missionaries, who always used 
their superior skill to help their black neighbors. 
The influence had been slowly at work, but its mani- 
festation was sudden and overwhelming. Atten- 
tive faces looked up at the preacher in the crude 
little chapel which had become crowded to over- 
flowing. Orderly behaviour took the place of war 
cries and wild dancing which always characterized a 
native assembly. Tears were detected even in the 
eyes of the men, whose function in African society 
was to hunt and fight, but never to reflect upon their 
sins. The usual activities were suspended in the 
new exaltation which swept through the kraal. In 
the huts people met to pray and sing the three hymns 
Mr. Moffat had translated into their language. 
Voluntarily they offered to build a church, and old 
and young joined in this community undertaking, 
women and children carrying laths and clay. 

But a certain Sunday in July was the red letter 
day in the history of the mission, for on that day, in 
the new church which the people themselves had 
built, the first Bechuana Christians were baptized 
and received into church membership. On that 
memorable day was used the communion service 
which had arrived from England only the Friday 
night before! Two years previously Mrs. Moffat 
had been asked by a friend at home what gift would 
be acceptable and without hesitation she had re- 



22 A Noble Army 

plied, "Send us a communion service; we shall want 
it some day." 

Further evidence of the Christian awakening was 
seen in the practical realm of life. Women and girls 
crowded around Mrs. Moffat, eager to train their 
clumsy fingers, accustomed to pickaxe and hoe, to 
use so tiny an implement as the needle. Men as 
well as women brought skins of animals to be made 
into garments. Many ludicrous sights were to be 
seen during this reform period, a man wearing a 
jacket with one sleeve, a black arm protruding from 
the other armhole; men with leather jackets and 
sleeves made of blue, red, or yellow cotton. Scarcity 
of material was responsible for these incongruities, 
but even the funny sights were precious to the mis- 
sionaries, for were they not tokens of the complete 
change in mental attitude which had befallen this 
heathen tribe? "Old things had passed away; all 
things were becoming new." Chairs, chests, and 
tables, hitherto spurned as the folly of Europeans, 
were now in great demand. And on the walls of 
native huts hung bunches of homemade candles, 
made from the fat formerly used for food or bodily 
decoration. Instead of the evening palaver around 
the smouldering fire, they actually sat in their huts 
reading the printed page! 

Out of Mothibi's kraal, with its thorn hedge, its 
straw huts and barren soil, its lazy, dormant people, 
developed in course of years the Christian village of 
Kuruman, a blessed refuge for worried travellers and 
new missionaries who came to settle in the lonely re- 
gions beyond the borders of Cape Colony. With its 
comfortable houses, gardens, water ditches, fruit and 



The Smoke of a Thousand Villages 23 

willow trees, and its orderly community life, Kuru- 
man was like a piece of well-kept, busy England trans- 
planted into the African wilderness by a one-time 
gardener and his efficient wife. 

In the year 1839 tne Moffat family, father, mother, 
and children sailed home to England, the first visit 
m twenty years! So little did Mr. Moffat suspect 
the tremendous welcome awaiting him, and so un- 
familiar did his native land appear that he lingered 
on shipboard after Mary and the children had gone 
on shore, ostensibly to attend to the luggage, but 
really to master the shy, homesick feelings that be- 
set him. Upon landing, the surprise of his life began. 
He was the hero of the hour. Great mass meetings 
were planned from one end of the kingdom to the 
other, and with the importance of a political cam- 
paign he was hurried from one town to another to 
address the throngs which gathered at the summons 
of his name, announced, perchance, by a wayside 
poster. In one place he held an audience of boys and 
girls in rapt attention for the space of an hour and a 
half. Young men and women were moved to give 
their lives to Christian service by the potency of his 
message and his spirit. It would be difficult to es- 
timate where his life counted most, in South Africa 
where he spent in all fifty years, or in England where 
his adult years were but few. 

In the London audiences which greeted the mis- 
sionary there often sat a young Scotch doctor who 
listened with a strange light burning in his blue- 
grey eyes. "In the morning sun," declared the 
speaker, "I have seen the smoke of a thousand 
villages where no missionary has ever been." "The 



24 A Noble Army 

smoke of a thousand villages !" That was enough. 
From that moment David Livingstone decided to 
give his life to Africa. The greatest missionary ex- 
plorer of all time was drawn to the dark continent 
by the message of Robert Moffat, the man who after- 
wards became his father-in-law. 

"The smoke of a thousand villages !" The human 
need typified by that pungent phrase had drawn 
Robert Moffat to Afrikaner's kraal and had 
prompted Mary Smith to break the dear home 
ties and travel that awful distance to join her lover 
in the Bechuana village. In their old age when they 
had returned to England for the last time, Mary 
Moffat once made this remark: "Robert can never 
say I hindered him in his work." "No, indeed," 
exclaimed her husband, "but I can tell you she has 
often sent me away from house and home for months 
together for evangelizing purposes and in my ab- 
sence has managed the station as well or better than 
I could myself." Space fails us to recount those 
thrilling journeys, to the kraal of Mosilikatse, the 
peerless chief, to the war, camp of the Mantatees, or 
to tell of that laborious achievement, the translation 
of the entire Bible into the Bechuana language, a 
document which became the priceless heritage of his 
successors. The exploits of the husband were always 
made possible by the cooperation of the wife. "The 
strength of two was felt in each one's power." At 
Mary's death, Robert Moffat exclaimed in realiza- 
tion of his deepest loss, "For fifty-three years I 
have had her to pray for me." The inner secret of 
their far-reaching lives was revealed in those signif- 
icant words. 



CHAPTER II. 

The Boy with Five Talents 

"Expect great things from God; attempt 
great things for God" 

Famous epigram of William Carey. 



CHAPTER II. 

The Boy with Five Talents 

If you would find a clue to the manhood career of 
some boy you know, take note of the things that boy 
does for no other reason save that he naturally likes 
to do them. A boy of six who is heard doing sums 
in arithmetic in the middle of the night is the future 
astronomer, mechanical engineer or perhaps the 
author of a new text-book in mathematics. A boy 
who turns his bedroom into a natural history museum 
and collects there birds, bugs, and all the plant speci- 
mens he can find in the forest, is more than likely 
to choose the work of botanist, biologist, or landscape 
gardener. If you have ever known a small boy 
whose practice it is to climb into a low-growing elm 
tree and from his favorite perch to preach a sermon 
to a voluntary congregation of village boys, you 
will easily mark him for a future preacher of force 
and fame. A boy who is known to have memorized 
a Latin vocabulary entire, to have made a fair start 
in Greek by studying the words found in a Bible 
commentary, to have read his first French book in 
three weeks, to have taught himself Dutch and 
Hebrew by means of borrowed books, that boy is 
designed unquestionably for a famous linguist and 
translator. A boy in his teens who works in a cob- 
bler's shop and covers the wall with a map of the 
world which he himself has made from pieces of 
brown p^ner. anu on which he pastes clippings and 
makes notes in his own handwriting, that boy is 



28 A Noble Army 

likely to learn a different calling from the shoe- 
maker's and become in course of years another Nan- 
sen, Peary or Livingstone. 

But what if all these five talents should be found 
in one boy in almost equal measure, what would you 
predict for that boy's future career? What one vo- 
cation is there which gives opportunity to the bota- 
nist, the mathematician, the translator, the preacher, 
and the explorer, so that each separate ability can 
find adequate expression ? But, in the first place, was 
there ever such a boy, with five strongly marked 
propensities, each one of which, if developed, would 
give him a life-work of success and usefulness? 
There was once such a boy and there is such a voca- 
tion, a vocation which calls into play every faculty 
a man possesses and then does not exhaust its de- 
mand. 

In the 1 8 th century, just before the days of George 
Washington and the American Revolution, a child 
was born in England who was destined to become the 
father, not of a new nation, but of a new enterprise 
as broad, as the world. He was the eldest of five 
children in a family named Carey, a name of inter- 
esting flavor because of its supposed Norse origin. 
It is easy to imagine a dash of Norse ancestry in the 
nature and career of William Carey, born in 1761 in 
the village of Paulerspury on the old Roman road 
between London and Chester. His father was a 
"tammy" or woolen cloth weaver by trade, doing 
business in his own cottage in the "Pury" end of 
town, beyond the burn along which the straggling 
village was built. Later he became schoolmaster 
at the "church end," so called. The boy William 




WILLIAM CAREY'S GRAVE AT SERAMPORE 




CROWDS OF WORSHIPPERS AT MOHAMMEDAN 
MOSQUE 

A Familiar Scene to William Carey (Millions of the 
People of India are Followers of Mohammed) 



The Boy with Five Talents 29 

was known to be precocious beyond his mates, but 
there was no one in Paulerspury to send a promising 
lad to Eton and Oxford, and at sixteen he was appren- 
ticed to a shoemaker in Hackleton and the cobbler's 
shop became his substitute for college. He always 
propped a book before him as he worked, and the 
languages he learned and the facts about the world 
that he gathered from works of science, history, and 
travel were not far behind the university curriculum. 
At night when he tramped over the country roads de- 
livering shoes or procuring leather, he would review 
in his mind the knowledge he had lately acquired, 
thus stamping it upon his memory indelibly. 

Despite his great ambition to learn, poverty and 
hard work would certainly have swamped at least 
some of the boy's five talents, had he not been im- 
pelled by the most conquering motive boy or man 
can know. William Carey had an active brain and a 
conscience as active and neither one nor the other 
would let him rest until he discovered a purpose big 
enough to govern his life. Where was to be found 
the answer to a boy's deepest questions? Not in 
the parish church, he knew, for there he had found 
rites and ceremonies and formal prayers, but nothing 
to call directly to his own mind and will and demand 
response. The outside of the boy had been employed 
in religious worship, but the inside — the boy him- 
self — had never been enlisted. In the cobbler's shop 
was another apprentice, an older boy, who belonged 
to the church group known as Dissenters, those who 
had separated from the Church of England and 
formed a church independent of state control. Mem- 
bers of this same church group had once dared the 



30 A Noble Army 

seas in a little boat called the Mayflower and laid the 
foundations of a new nation. But William Carey, 
like most others bred in the Established Church, had 
nothing but contempt for this outcast body of wor- 
shippers. In hot pride he argued with the Dissenter 
apprentice, always contriving to have the last word, 
though forced to admit to himself that his antagonist 
had the best of the argument. To ease his conscience, 
he began to go more frequently to church, attending 
three services on Sunday in the parish church and the 
Dissenter prayer-meeting during the week. It was 
among the despised Dissenters that William found 
the object of his quest, a Christ whom he worshipped 
not in the formulas of church service, but in the 
friendly regions of his own personal life. 

With such books as he could procure in a place 
where public libraries did not exist, William Carey 
tried to work out an intelligent belief or theology for 
his own satisfaction. Honest thinking led him to a 
choice of the Baptist Church and in 1783 he was 
baptized in the River Nen near the meeting-house in 
Northampton. When a young man of twenty, he 
began to preach to small groups of people, first in his 
native village and the town where he worked, then 
at Barton where he was the regular minister for three 
years, walking twelve miles to preach on Sunday and 
working in the shop at Hackleton during the week. 
But he was by no means an unlettered or unscholarly 
preacher, for every morning at his devotions he read 
a portion of the Bible in three languages, Latin, 
Greek, and Hebrew, and thus mastered its content. 

While in the early twenties, William Carey had the 
most depressing experience of ill fortune which can 



The Boy with Five Talents 3 1 

well befall a man. He bought out the shoemaker's 
business and that failed; he married a wife and she 
failed to bring him happiness; he plodded from village 
to village trying to sell an order of shoes contracted 
for and rejected; early and late he worked in his 
garden only to be attacked by ague caused by the 
unhealthy neighborhood; his first born child died of 
fever. During this period he received from his con- 
gregation at Barton barely enough to pay for the 
clothes he wore threadbare in their service, and from 
his trade insufficient to give the daily necessities to 
his family. But his fine spirit of determination was 
unbroken. He accepted a call to a somewhat larger 
church at Moulton and there, while living on an in- 
come that never exceeded $180 a year, preaching, 
ing, teaching school, gardening, studying, and cob- 
bling shoes, he worked out his great idea which 
electrified his generation and turned the tide of his- 
tory. 

If to lay hold of an idea other men have not per- 
ceived marks a man as original, then William Carey 
was a bold and original pioneer. To no other man 
of his time did the great idea come home with such 
startling force and urgency. It had the authority 
of a voice from God. For years Carey had read 
books of history and travel and had illuminated his 
map with notes concerning all the countries of the 
world, populations, customs, religions. In his own 
life he had felt the power of Christ helping him to re- 
sist temptation. Gradually he brought the two facts 
together, the world's condition of darkness and need, 
and the power of Christ to lighten and relieve. Ac- 
cording to his calculations there were 731 million 



32 A Noble Army 

inhabitants of the world, 420 millions of whom 
could be classified as heathen. The corollary was 
plain. It was the duty of Christians to carry their 
religion to the darkened countries of the world. 

To Carey the call was clear, but he had a long, hard 
fight before he could convince even his fellow minis- 
ters of its prime importance. Once in a ministers' 
meeting he ventured to propose a discussion on the 
subject, when the chairman, an elderly man, cried in 
dismay, "Young man, sit down! When God pleases 
to convert the heathen world, He will do so without 
your help or mine." Publicly rebuked for his zeal, 
the young man went home and wrote an essay which 
gave some telling facts and figures about the different 
countries of the world. The document was after- 
wards published and praised for its literary value as 
well as its logic. It was six years, however, before 
Carey succeeded in breaking down opposition to his 
plan. At a gathering of ministers at Nottingham he 
preached a sermon which took his hearers by storm. 
On that occasion he flung out the inspired phrase 
which men have quoted ever since, "Expect great 
things from God; attempt great things for God." 
The effect was irresistible. In that same year, in the 
presence of twelve country ministers, there was form- 
ed the first organization for sending missionaries to 
the non-Christian world. Before this time individ- 
ual Christians, Paul, Augustine, Xavier, and others 
had carried their Gospel to the borders of the world, 
but there had been no organized group at home to 
stand back of them with money and counsel. The 
vision of William Carey, the cobbler, created the 
movement which has enlisted thousands in its service, 




s o 

a 

5! 

< - 
U u 



3 



The Boy with Five Talents 33 

and influenced millions. In the light of history we 
can see that the world program of Carey works better 
than political treaty or any other measure, in bring- 
ing all nations and races into "one great fellowship 
of love." 

It was in November, 1793, that the Carey family 
landed in India, after a voyage of five months from 
Dover to Calcutta. The first year they spent in the 
country produced problems enough to stagger any- 
body but a Christian missionary. "They were 
destitute, afflicted, ill-treated." In a foreign land, 
fifteen thousand miles from home, with passports 
forbidden by the East India Company, without 
money, without friends, they wandered about from 
place to place, until, in a little boat on the Jamoona 
River, when but one meal remained for the destitute 
family, an English settler came to their rescue and 
offered them the hospitality of his home. In a tiger 
jungle across the river Carey secured a few acres and 
built a bamboo house for himself and family. Thou- 
sands of natives flocked at once to the scene, eager to 
secure the protection of the Englishman's gun against 
tigers and wild beasts of the forest. There in the 
jungle Carey wrote to the ministers at home, de- 
claring that he was learning the language rapidly 
and expected soon to preach to regular congrega- 
tions; and, with his usual interest in world projects, 
suggesting that the society send its next missionaries 
to Africa or Asia rather than America because of 
the density of population. "Attended as I am with 
difficulties," he wrote, "I would not renounce my 
undertaking for all the world." 

Early in 1794 the financial burden was lifted, for 



34 <A Noble Army 

he was appointed manager of an indigo factory at 
Mudnabati, on a salary of twelve hundred and fifty 
dollars a year. His first move was to write to the 
society, releasing it from the necessity of providing 
his support, and urging that the money be used to 
start a mission elsewhere. His next move was to 
plan his expenses so carefully that he could give a 
quarter or a third of his income to his own missionary 
work. With his scientific knowledge and his sys- 
tematic habits Carey was a competent business 
man, but at no time in his career did he neglect his 
main business, the spread of the Gospel. His new 
position gave him access to large numbers of people, 
farmers who cultivated the indigo plant and the fac- 
tory workers. Gaining facility in the language, he 
talked and preached more and more often, until the 
following year he had a regular congregation of 
several hundred. Besides his business, his gardening, 
his preaching, he had begun to translate the Bible in- 
to Bengali, compiling at the same time a grammar 
and dictionary of the language. True linguist that 
he was, he perceived that he could not do justice to 
Bible meanings without a knowledge of the mother 
tongue, Sanskrit, and promptly set to work to master 
its intricacies. In the process he translated the San- 
skrit grammar and dictionary into English, and be- 
gan a composite dictionary of Sanskrit, Bengali, and 
English. 

In five years after arrival in Calcutta, the Bible 
translation was finished, save for a few Old Testa- 
ment books, and Carey set out for Calcutta to secure 
estimates for printing. On one of these trips to get 
types cast, he passed the scene of suttee, the terrible 



The Boy with Five Talents 35 

Hindu custom of burning the widow upon the funeral 
pyre of her husband. He stood aghast at the grisly 
preparations: the carefully laid pile of wood, the dead 
body, and the tragic, defiant figure of the woman 
to be sacrificed. Six times she was led around the 
pyre, scattering sweetmeats to the assembled spec- 
tators. In vain did Carey cry out against the shock- 
ing murder. "It is a most holy deed," they made 
answer, "and if you do not like to see it, go further 
away." He besought the woman not to throw her 
life away, assuring her no evil would befall her if she 
refused to be burned to death. By way of answer 
she mounted the pile and danced in calm contempt of 
death. Then she lay down beside her husband and 
put her arm around his neck in readiness to die. Dry 
cocoa leaves were piled high above them and ghee 
or melted butter poured over the top. Two bamboos 
were pressed down upon the victim, and when the 
fire was kindled the crowd set up a great shout to 
deaden her cries of pain. From that moment 
William Carey vowed unremitting enmity to the 
Hindu custom of suttee. As Livingstone fought the 
slave trade in Africa, he fought the widow-burning 
in India, until thirty years later it was forbidden by 
decree of the British government. 

Carey was now thirty-eight years old and the 
great adventure of his life, missionary and personal, 
was yet to come. About the time the indigo business 
failed because of floods and labor troubles, four new 
missionaries landed in India. One of the number 
was William Ward, the printer of Hull, to whom 
Carey had remarked five years before, "If the Lord 



36 A Noble Army 

bless us, we shall want a person of your business to 
enable us to print the Scriptures; I hope you will 
come after us." On a Sunday morning in the 
autumn of 1799, William Ward approached Mud- 
nabati and greeted the man whose challenge had 
spurred him to a missionary life. It was a jubilant 
occasion for both. Upon consultation the two men 
decided to move the mission to Danish territory 
where they would be unhindered by government op- 
position. The British East India Company opposed 
any attempt to Christianize the Hindus, even for- 
bidding the new arrivals to settle at Mudnabati. 
Carey had been allowed to remain in their territory 
only because he was registered as an indigo planter. 
The new site chosen was Serampore, a town on the 
Hoogli river fifteen miles from Calcutta, in as dense- 
ly populated a region as you can find on the globe. 
Early in the New Year and the new century the 
Serampore settlement was founded, famous in after 
years for the plan of government it adopted. Like 
that first community of disciples in Jerusalem record- 
ed in the Book of Acts, "Not one of them said that 
aught of the things he possessed was his own, but 
they had all things common." It was a practical 
experiment in cooperative living. Carey's business 
skill made the experiment a financial success, while 
devotion to the same beloved Leader made it easier 
for them to love one another. They had a con- 
stitution of the brotherhood and every Saturday 
evening they met together "to adjust differences and 
to pledge themselves anew to love one another." 
"No private family," wrote William Ward, "ever 
enjoyed a greater portion of happiness even in 



The Boy with Five Talents 37 

worldly prosperity, than we have done since we re- 
solved to have all things common." It is quite im- 
possible to estimate the influence of this brother- 
hood of Serampore. In a region where many differ- 
ent races lived side by side, it was an example of 
Christian friendliness which did more good than 
sermons. In world history it stands as a coopera- 
tive enterprise which has no equal save that original 
community in Jerusalem. In a year's time the 
school and press enabled the brotherhood to be self- 
supporting. In two years they were able to buy ex- 
tra land and property and in six years to reimburse 
the Society for the money it had advanced. Event- 
ually the settlement covered an extensive area with 
fine residences, school and college buildings, a paper 
mill, printing press worked by a steam engine of 
twelve horse power, the first to be introduced into 
India, and Carey's Botanical Garden, a famous land- 
mark in North India. 

Carey's garden was said to contain the best and 
rarest collection of plants in the East. It comprised 
five acres with rare trees, mahogany, teak, tamarind, 
eucalyptus, and an immense variety of plants. The 
gardeners were Hindus, trained by Carey not only 
to tend the plants, but to know and pronounce their 
Latin names. The garden was a side issue in the 
busy man's life, but in itself was a prodigious achieve- 
ment, representing a vast amount of study and ob- 
servation. Carey became an acknowledged au- 
thority on botany and agriculture, editing botanical 
catalogues, writing magazine articles, and founding 
the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India, 
said to be the model of the Royal Agricultural Socie- 



38 A Noble Army 

ty of England. As a scientist alone, the man's 
career would have had significance and science was 
only his hobby, his avocation. 

For seven years Carey preached in the Bengali 
language without winning a single convert. Imagine, 
then, his rejoicing when on the last Sunday of 1800 he 
led into the river Ganges for baptism his own son 
Felix and Krishna Pal, the first Hindu to respond to 
his message. This man became afterwards a mis- 
sionary to Assam as well as writer of hymns in his 
own dialect. His wife and four daughters soon 
followed his lead, and several others broke caste and 
joined the Christians, including three men from the 
writer caste, a Mohammedan, and a young Brahmin 
who came from the tiger jungle where Carey had 
lived that first year. These were the vanguard of a 
large group of Hindu Christians, many of whom were 
trained as missionaries and sent over a wide area of 
India. 

At Serampore Carey's labors became rapidly ex- 
tended. With the help of his colleagues he estab- 
lished a free school for Hindus, a boarding school for 
Portuguese, Armenian, and Eurasian children, a 
school in Calcutta for destitute boys and girls of all 
races and ages, which in time numbered four hundred, 
a leper hospital, and finally the Serampore College to 
which the King of Denmark gave a charter of incor- 
poration placing it upon the same level as European 
colleges. 

For thirty years William Carey divided his time 
between Serampore and Calcutta, rowing down the 
river to the city Tuesday evenings, returning Fridays 
and always studying on the way. A chapel had been 



The Boy with Five Talents 39 

opened in Lall Bazaar, a kind of Bowery section of 
Calcutta, and at night he preached to the poor and 
ignorant with as keen zest as he taught the high 
caste students during the day. Carey had not been 
ten years in India before he was appointed by the 
governor-general as teacher of Bengali and later of 
Sanskrit and Marathi in the government college 
at Fort William. With no university training in 
youth, no school life beyond the village school of 
Paulerspury taught by his father, only the cobbler's 
shop and his books plus his life purpose, he had be- 
come one of the most eminent scholars of the Orient. 
Thenew appointment gave him increased income, for, 
as professor of three languages, he received a salary 
of nine thousand dollars a year. What did the man 
do with his new fortune ? Buy a house in the wealthy 
section of Calcutta and keep his servants and horses? 
Far from it. He planned his family expenses on a 
basis of two hundred dollars a year, plus a small 
additional sum for clothing, and gave all the remain- 
der to the mission! An income of nine thousand, 
living expenses around three hundred, eighty-seven 
hundred dollars given away annually! What was 
the secret of this extraordinary generosity? His 
colleagues, Marshman and Ward, lived in the same 
manner, frugal with themselves, munificent with 
others. 

A man would need to live a simple life in order to 
perform in one lifetime the labors of Dr. Carey. 
With the help of his colleagues he translated por- 
tions of the Bible into forty Oriental languages and 
dialects. Carey did for Asia what Wycliffe and 
Luther did for western Europe, gave the people the 



40 A Noble Army 

Bible in their own speech. He knew the power of 
the Word of God. It had united the members of 
the Serampore community into a happy family 
group, why should it not unite the races and nations 
of the world if widely read and understood? 

In the year 1812a catastrophe befell the Serampore 
mission. The printing press was burned to the 
ground; valuable fonts of type were lost and Carey's 
precious manuscript of the polyglot dictionary of all 
languages, derived from Sanskrit. With tears in 
his eyes Dr. Carey approached the smoking ruin the 
day of his return to Calcutta. "In one short even- 
ing," said he, "the labors of years are consumed. 
The Lord has laid me low that I may look more sim- 
ply to Him. I hope to repair the loss and to com- 
plete my favorite scheme if my life be prolonged." 
The loss was estimated at $50,000, but so great was 
the sympathy in England that in fifty days the en- 
tire sum was subscribed. 

The time has come for us to speak of Dr. Carey 
in his home circle, where the real quality of the man is 
always revealed. There his Christ-like spirit shone 
in its gentlest and purest light. The wife of his 
youth was a trial instead of a blessing. She did not 
want to be a missionary's wife; she did not want to 
leave England for a foreign country; she rebelled 
against the hardships they suffered there; and in the 
end her mind became deranged and she died insane. 
With this trying companion Dr. Carey was invariably 
patient and courteous, manifesting in his letters a 
kind of wistful affection. It was in middle age that 
the real romance of his life came to him. A German 
lady of noble birth and high breeding, the Lady 



The Boy with Five Talents 41 

Charlotte Emelia Rhumohr had come to India for 
her health and had secured a residence at Serampore. 
At first a skeptic concerning religion, she soon began 
to learn English that she might join the missionaries 
at public worship, and it was not long before she 
joined them in active Christian service. In 1808 
she married Dr. Carey and their union may well be 
ranked with that of the Brownings and those elect 
few who are completely one in mind and spirit. Her 
love letters, written during an enforced absence from 
her husband, belong with the most beautiful litera- 
ture of that order, revealing in a courtly style a rev- 
erent devotion to the man she had married. But 
their happiness was brief, for Mrs. Carey lived only 
^thirteen years after her marriage. It was char- 
acteristic of Dr. Carey that he should say it was bet- 
ter for her to go first, better for him to bear the grief 
of separation, than for its heavy load to fall upon her. 

To his children Dr. Carey gave an eager sympathy 
and wise counsel. A letter to his son Jabez when he 
left home on a missionary journey to Amboyna, 
contains advice which resembles that of Polonius 
to his son Laertes in Hamlet. "Behave affably and 
genteelly to all, but not cringingly towards any. 
Feel that you are a man, and always act with that 
dignified sincerity and truth which will command 
the esteem of all. ... A gentleman is the 
next best character after a Christian, and the latter 
includes the former. Money never makes a gentle- 
man, neither does a fine appearance, but an enlarged 
understanding joined to engaging manners." 

It was the habit of Carey's life never to take credit 
to himself for the great work he did. In his old age, 



42 A Noble Army 

among the visitors to his Serampore house came 
Alexander Duff, the young Scotch missionary. After 
they had talked and prayed together Duff turned to 
leave the room when he heard a feeble voice recalling 
him. Returning to the side of the older man, he 
listened to these words: "Mr. Duff, you have been 
speaking about Dr. Carey, Dr. Carey; when I am gone 
say nothing about Dr. Carey, speak about Dr. Carey's 
aviour. 

With all his modest estimate of his own powers, we 
know that William Carey was a boy of unusual en- 
dowment, that he possessed five marked talents. 
But we know that his talents were more than doubled 
by his unflagging industry fired by his great purpose. 
Some one has said that a man should work by multi- 
plication rather than addition. William Carey 
multiplied his abilities and his influence by his vision 
of service, which, like the love of his Master, was 
world-wide. 



CHAPTER III. 

The King of the Cannibals 

"He walked with God, why may not I?" 
John G. Paton. 



CHAPTER III. 
The King of the Cannibals 

A father and son trudged resolutely along the 
road which led from the Scotch village of Torthor- 
wald to Kilmarnock, forty miles away. The father 
was a man of striking countenance whom you would 
turn to look at anywhere; a strong, sensitive face 
framed with long, flowing locks of yellowish-golden 
hair. He carried his hat in his hand, and at inter- 
vals his lips moved as if he were speaking without 
audible words. On the boy's face was the look you 
often see when a boy is about to enter a big, untried 
experience, an experience which he ardently wants 
and yet dreads to face. In his hand he carried the 
symbol of his undertaking, a bundle tied up in a huge 
pocket handkerchief, containing his Bible and all his 
clothes. That bundle told the story, a story as old 
as human life; a boy leaving home for the first time 
to go alone into the great world. Under how many 
guises has that story been enacted the wide world 
over? Young people, boys and girls, going out from 
the old home into — what? The unanswered ques- 
tion is what gives pang to the separation, especially 
for the older folks who are left behind. 

At the appointed place of parting father and son 
halted their steps and looked sorrowfully into each 
other's eyes. Grasping the boy's hand and speaking 
in broken and solemn tones, the father said, "God 
bless you, my son! Your father's God prosper you 
and keep you from all evil!" He could say no more, 



46 A Noble Army 

but his lips kept moving, as before, in silent prayer 
to God for his boy. The boy was the first to break 
away, making a determined dash and running as fast 
as he could go until he reached a bend in the road. 
There he slowed down and glanced around to behold 
his father standing in the same spot where he had 
left him, his golden hair uncovered and his eyes fixed 
upon the retreating figure of his boy. Waving his 
hat, the boy rushed around the curve which hid him 
from view. But the vision of that beloved form 
standing in the road behind clutched at his heart- 
strings until he could not resist climbing the dyke for 
one last look. And there, at the same moment, was 
his father climbing the dyke for one last glimpse 
of the boy. But the boy could not be seen, and 
after looking for a few minutes he stepped back to 
the road and began his lonely walk home, his tall 
form erect and his head still uncovered. Through 
his tears the boy watched until his father disappear- 
ed in the distance, then went on his way to the town 
where he was to take train for Glasgow. "I vowed 
deeply and oft, " said the boy as he recounted the 
■experience in later years, "by the help of God to live 
and act so as never to grieve or dishonor such a father 
and mother as He had given me." 

Back to the cottage with its roof of thatch and 
oaken wattles went the father, back to "Wee Jen," 
his wife, with her quick wit and her high spirits, back 
to the little village with its cottars and crofters, 
^acksmiths and tailors, weavers and shoemakers, 
the Scotland of Burns and Barrie, back to its earnest, 
simple, God-fearing life, went the man with the 
™>Ade\ 'ocks and the shining, noble face. On went 



The King of the Cannibals 47 

the boy to the city, on through his competitive ex- 
aminations, into normal school and college, teach- 
ing to earn money for another term of school, working 
as city missionary in the poorest district of Glasgow, 
reaching drunkards and criminals with his message, 
studying at the same time at the university and med- 
ical school, on through ten hard-working years until 
that day in 1858 when he and his young wife sailed 
away from England in a ship bound for Melbourne, 
Australia. There they embarked on another more 
adventurous voyage which landed them on the shore 
of a lonely island in the South Pacific ocean. It was 
an island as mysterious as Robinson Crusoe's, sur- 
rounded by a coral reef and tossing waves; covered 
with tropical vegetation, sugar-cane, banana, bread- 
fruit, and cocoanut trees; inhabited by — cannibals! 
Here he was, John Gibson Paton, with his wife, Mary 
Ann Robson, thousands of miles from home on a 
cannibal island in the South Seas! If you would 
know how and why he had come, you should read the 
fascinating account of his life told by himself, a story 
every whit as full of novel adventure as Robinson 
Crusoe, and more thrilling, because true. Or, if 
you are bent upon tracing the reason of John Paton's 
presence here you should go in reverent imagination 
back to that Scotch cottage in Torthorwald, and 
follow the children of that house as they tiptoed 
softly past the closed door behind which their father 
knelt twice or thrice each day in prayer for his boys 
and girls. "The outside world might not know," 
said John, "but we knew, whence came that happy 
light as of a new-born smile that always was dawning 
on my father's face; it was a reflection from the 



48 A Noble Army 

Divine Presence in the consciousness of which he 
lived." From the British Isles to the New Hebrides 
is a long, long way in miles, but from the altar of a 
Scottish home it is but a step, an easy, natural step 
for the oldest son to take. 

On the island of Tanna, generally known as a 
cannibal island, John and Mary Paton prepared their 
first dwelling, built upon a stone foundation to with- 
stand hurricane, with lime plastering burned in 
kilns from the coral rock, and sugar-cane leaf for 
thatch. In crowds the native people of the island 
came flocking down to the shore to stare at the new- 
comers with their queer clothes, queer house, and 
queer tools. What an odd sight each group must 
have presented to the other, different color of skin, 
different clothes, different tools and utensils, different 
language; human beings all, but how enormously far 
removed in manner of life and thought! Somewhat 
dubiously the Patons looked at their neighbors-to-be 
and a disconcerting group they surely found them ! 
Naked savages, adorned with feathers stuck in their 
twisted hair, daubed with paint of many colors, 
armed with tomahawks, muskets, clubs, and spears! 
And worse than their hideous appearance were the 
ugly stories told about the deeds they did: men and 
women killed and eaten; widows strangled to death 
that they might accompany their husbands to the 
spirit world and be their servants there even as they 
had been here! Could this be the nineteenth cen- 
tury and the world in which Christ once lived, the 
Saviour of all mankind? 

"Nungsi nari enu?" exclaimed one native man to 
another as he held up a mysterious article belonging 




A HINDU WEDDING PARTY 
Bride and Groom in Center 



The King of the Cannibals 49 

to the missionaries. Here was the clue for which 
Paton had been watching and, lifting a piece of wood, 
he repeated the phrase, "Nungsi nari enu?" The 
two men looked at each other with a knowing smile 
as much as to say, "He has got hold of our language 
now." His question brought the desired answer and 
the new word was written down in phonetic spelling. 
By repeating that useful question, "What is it?" and 
watching for other questions to ask, he speedily 
learned the Tannese names for many common ob- 
jects. By guesses, cross-questions, and comparisons 
of words as used under different circumstances, he 
accumulated quite an extensive vocabulary, and in 
course of time gave written form to the language 
which hitherto had boasted not even an alphabet, 
much less a literature. But like most savage peoples 
who have taught themselves by observation of Na- 
ture and by actions performed instinctively, the 
Tannese had developed a crude religion which exerted 
a terrible power over their lives. There were stone 
idols, charms, and sacred objects which they feared 
with a deadly fear, and there were witches, wizards, 
and sacred men who were supposed to wield the power 
of life and death over all the islands. It was a re- 
ligion of unceasing terror, lest some evil spirit should 
take offense and punish the hapless victim. But 
cruel and distorted as it was, it was a real religion, a 
groping of the untaught human heart after powers un- 
seen and it gave the missionary a starting point for 
his message of a God who rules an orderly universe 
and loves His erring human children. 

Trials and tribulations beset John Paton from be- 
ginning to end of his life on Tanna, but of all his 



5© A Noble Army 

hairbreadth escapes and harrowing anxieties, in fact, 
of all the adventure and hardship of his long life, 
nothing so grievous befell him as in the month of 
March, 1859, four months after landing on the island. 
In that one month his wife and his baby son were 
taken from him. The little new house on the coral- 
reefed island was left silent and desolate, that first 
home which had been so proudly and, as they 
thought, so securely built. Too late they discovered 
the fatal mistake of locating on low land near the 
shore. "Missi, if you stay here, you will soon die," 
said a friendly chief in warning. "No Tannese 
sleeps as low down as you do in this damp weather. 
We sleep on the high ground and the trade wind keeps 
us well. You must go and sleep on the hill and then 
you will have better health." Realizing the danger, 
Paton planned to move his house to higher levels, 
but, before the heavy labor could even be begun, the 
malarial swamps had done their deadly work, and 
his young wife was gone beyond recall. In one 
grave near the house, he laid the mother and child, 
his own hands rendering perforce those last services 
to the dead. He inlaid the grave with coral blocks 
and covered it with broken bits of lovely white coral, 
and thenceforth the burial place became a kind of 
shrine for the lonely man in the days of ague, fever, 
and terrible depression that followed. "But for 
Jesus and the fellowship Fie vouchsafed me there 
I must have gone mad and died beside that lonely 
grave." In these words Paton recalled in later years 
the desolating experience of his early manhood. 

The novelty which first surrounded the mission- 
aries soon wore off, and a series of annoyances and 



The King of the Cannibals 51 

persecutions began. Chiefs banded together and 
seized half of the land purchased for the mission 
house, "tabooing" the half that was left. Reeds 
were stuck into the ground around the property, 
mysterious signals of "taboo," that is, death to him 
who continued to build the fence enclosing the mis- 
sion premises. When a third payment was made for 
the disputed property, the "taboo" was lifted for a 
season and building resumed. Next came a spell of 
dry weather which hindered the growth of yams and 
bananas. This misfortune was promptly charged 
to the missionary and the Christian teachers he had 
brought from the island of Aneityum, where the 
Gospel had already been taught and accepted. An 
important council was held on Tanna and powerful 
chiefs pronounced the verdict of death to the Chris- 
tians unless rain came forthwith. Fortunately rain 
fell within a few days and the death penalty was re- 
pealed, only to be invoked again when continued 
rains and hurricanes brought fever to the people and 
damage to the fruit trees. Another cause of com- 
plaint was found in the sudden death of an Aneit- 
yumese chief who had just returned home from a 
visit to Tanna. His death was ascribed to Paton 
and to the "Worship," as they called the religion he 
tried to teach them and to which a few tremblingly 
responded. The mission house should be burned 
and the whole mission party either murdered or 
compelled to leave die island. Assemblies were 
held, fiery speeches delivered, and women killed, 
cooked, and eaten, such being the tribal covenant 
for life or death. But their plans were unexpectedly 
defeated, for Nowar, the aged chief, in whose do- 



52 A Noble Army 

main Paton lived, resolved to defend him, and, when 
the murder frenzy was at its height, a warrior chief 
arose, swung his great club in the air and flung it 
crashing to the ground, crying in a loud and awful 
voice, "The man that kills Missi must first kill me, 
the men that kill the mission teachers must first kill 
me and my people, for we shall stand by them and 
defend them till death." On this occasion and 
many, many times thereafter did Paton record, "Our 
dear Lord Jesus interposed on our behalf this day." 

Before the mission house could be removed to 
higher ground, Paton was smitten with fever and 
ague fourteen times, the last attack leaving him so 
weak he had literally to creep up the hill for a 
breath of clear and bracing air. There on a bed of 
cocoanut leaves, fed with cocoanut juice and native 
food, and tended by two Christian natives from 
Aneityum, old Abraham and his wife Nafatu, he 
came slowly back to health. With the help of these 
two faithful Christians the new house was laboriously 
put together, and fever and ague departed. "That 
noble old soul Abraham stood by me as an angel of 
God in sickness and in danger," wrote Paton. "Any 
trust, however sacred or valuable, could be absolutely 
reposed in him, and in trial or danger I was often re- 
freshed by that old teacher's prayers, as I used to be 
by the prayers of my saintly father in my child- 
hood's home." And Abraham was a converted 
cannibal ! 

No sooner had Paton become settled in his new 
home than direct attacks upon his life began. De- 
spite growing hostility there had been signs of feeble 
response to the "Worship," for forty or more came 







•\- c 







K 






< * 






> r= 

Z PQ 

< 2 

H < 

z M 

Q 3 

^ — 



_ 



The King of the Cannibals 53 

each Sunday to service and several men came regu- 
larly by night, as Nicodemus once came to Jesus, 
to talk about the new religion which was so strangely 
disturbing their peace. The old chief Nowar with 
three or four others seemed to be half Christian, 
drawn to the Lord Christ, but easily swayed and 
diverted by the people about them. And the savage 
people were bent upon killing the missionary and 
destroying every trace of the religion he had come to 
teach. They hated Jehovah and the "Worship," so 
they said, for it made them afraid to do as they 
always had done. Early one morning Paton awaken- 
ed to a vivid consciousness of danger and peering out 
of the window, discovered that his house was sur- 
rounded with armed men and a chief was giving the 
sign of murder. Kneeling down, he gave himself 
body and soul to the Lord Jesus for what surely seem- 
ed to be the last time on earth. From his knees he 
went straight into the midst of the savages, talking 
calmly and persuasively with them until many slunk 
away into the bush and those who remained entered 
into a covenant of peace. But the truce was brief, 
for a few days later a wild chief pursued him for four 
hours with a loaded musket which many times was 
levelled directly at him, but the trigger never pulled. 
"Looking up in unceasing prayer to our dear Lord 
Jesus," said Paton, "I left all in His hands and felt 
immortal till my work was done." Three times in 
one night he awakened to hear men pounding at his 
door and trying to force an entrance. On this night 
and many subsequent occasions, a little retriever 
dog stood between his master and death. 

Fiercer grew the lust for murder, and surer grew the 



54 A Noble Army 

missionary that God had placed him there and would 
protect him until his task was finished. Time and 
again he was surrounded by armed men who pointed 
muskets at him, but never fired a shot. Once, three 
sacred men tried to take his life by nahak, witch- 
craft, a nerve-racking ordeal in which the missionary 
was victorious, but which left one of the sacred men 
so enraged that for weeks he haunted Paton like a 
spectre, appearing suddenly on the path with giant 
spear upraised to strike. On a New Year's day, 
never to be forgotten, two men with black painted 
faces and armed with great clubs appeared at the 
house, demanding medicine for a sick boy. Upon 
being admitted they grasped each man his kawas, 
killing-stone, and assumed a menacing posture. 
Upon being asked to leave they again seized their 
clubs, raised them aloft, and were preparing to strike 
when the two dogs sprang at their faces and diverted 
the blows. The loyalty of a dog had again saved 
Paton from a cruel death. 

Though his life was in constant danger and he 
could never for one moment relax his watchfulness, 
the missionary went calmly about his work, trying 
to reach and save the savage people. With a few 
helpers he succeeded in building a church, a fine 
suitable structure for the tropics, with roof of iron- 
wood and sugar-cane leaf, supported by massive 
pillars, and a floor of broken white coral covered with 
cocoanut leaf mats. It was a church to be proud of 
at any time, and built as it was under' circumstances 
of daily hostility and threat of death, it was a striking 
evidence of Paton's trust in God. A task even 
more arduous was accomplished in those critical 



The King of the Cannibals 55 

days, for with a printing press and a font of type 
brought from Glasgow, and no previous knowledge 
of the craft, he succeeded in printing the first book in 
the Tannese language. Yet with all the labors of 
love he performed for their benefit, the poor, benight- 
ed people still distrusted their white friend and 
sought by every means to take his life. 

The war chief Miaki was his worst enemy and pro- 
voked the people to hatred and murder. The night 
finally came when no candle could be lighted in the 
mission house lest some one of its occupants should 
be seen and shot. Throughout that long and terrible 
night Abraham, Nafatu, and Paton watched and 
waited, and in the grey light of morning discerned 
Miaki raising the trumpet-shell to his mouth to 
summon the people for attack. In response to the 
signal a host of howling savages rushed down the 
hill toward the house. There was no further use in 
remonstrance or resistance; the Christians must 
fly for their lives if they would escape that raging 
mob. Stealing out and locking the door upon their 
precious possessions, they crept into the bush and 
made their way to Nowar's village unobserved. 
But the chief Nowar was powerless to protect them 
from the mad fury of Miaki and his warriors, and 
begged them to go away before he and his people 
should be slain. As the peril increased, the old 
chief cried to Paton, "You cannot remain longer in 
my house. My son will guide you to the great chest- 
nut tree in the bush. Climb up into it and remain 
there till the moon rises." There was nothing left 
but to obey this odd command, and, following his 
guide, he climbed the great tree and hid himself in 



56 A Noble Army 

its branches, listening to the discharge of muskets and 
the yells of savage men not far away. "Yet," said 
Paton, "I sat there among the branches, safe in the 
arms of Jesus. Never, in all my sorrows, did my 
Lord draw nearer to me and speak more soothingly 
in my soul, than when the moonlight flickered among 
those chestnut leaves and the night air played on my 
throbbing brow, as I told all my heart to Jesus. 
Alone, yet not alone! If thus thrown back upon 
your own soul, alone, all, all alone, in the midnight, 
in the bush, in the very embrace of death itself, have 
you a Friend that will not fail you then?" 

Long before morning Nowar's son returned to es- 
cort Paton to the shore and the canoe in which his 
one hope of safety lay. Over the white sandy bay 
and under lee of the island they paddled swiftly and 
safely, but, when they steered south toward the 
mission station on that side of the island, wind and 
waves broke in fury upon them. Paddling and 
bailing for dear life, they drifted at daybreak toward 
shore, to find themselves back in the identical spot 
they had left five hours before! By this time Nowar 
and his men were hiding in the bush and Miaki and 
his warriors were but half a mile away. Every 
means of escape seemed to be cut off and the trap 
ready to spring upon its helpless victims. At this 
juncture, Faimungo, chief of an inland tribe, came to 
take leave of the missionary with whom he had 
always been friendly, saying, "Farewell, Missi, I am 
going home. I don't wish to see the work and the 
murders of this morning." Moved by a sudden 
impulse Paton cried, "Faimungo, will you let us 
follow you? Will you show us the path?" Though 



The King of the Cannibals 57 

trembling with apprehension, the chief consented and 
the mad race for life began. It was a wild and awful 
flight, four groups of armed men crossing their path 
and threatening their lives, a killing-stone thrown so 
close that it grazed old Abraham's cheek, and an- 
other caught in the branches of a tree just above 
Paton's head! Through such terrors, preserved only 
by the hand of God from cruel death, the little 
company made its way at last to the mission house on 
the south shore of the island where they had a brief 
respite from pursuit. 

But the rage of a savage chief is slow to abate, and 
to his latest hiding place Miaki tracked his prey, 
having first united all the chiefs of the island in a 
bond of blood to kill the missionary and everybody 
connected with him. On the last dreadful night 
Paton had fallen asleep from exhaustion, when the 
little retriever dog that had stuck to her master 
through every disaster sprang upon him and pulled 
his clothes to waken him. In the darkness gaunt 
figures could be seen prowling about the house. 
Suddenly a glare of light fell into the room. Men 
were passing the window with blazing torches in 
their hands. Then came a burst of flames not far 
away. The church was on fire and torches were 
being laid to the reed fence connecting church and 
dwelling. A few minutes more and the fire would 
race along that line of fence and reach the house! 
Then — death in the flames or at the hands of the 
dark beings lurking outside! Snatching a useless 
revolver in his left hand and an American tomahawk 
in his right, Paton rushed out the door, ran to the 
blazing fence and cut it from top to bottom, tearing 



^8 A Noble Army 

it up and flinging it back in the flames. In the eerie 
light of the fire he espied dark, shifting shadows on 
the ground behind him, and sprang back to find 
himself surrounded by seven or eight savages with 
clubs upraised to strike. "Kill him! Kill him!" 
they screamed in rage, With a prayer to God in his 
heart and the empty revolver pointed at them, 
Paton cried, "Dare to strike me, and my Jehovah 
God will punish you. We love you all and for 
doing you good you want to kill us. But our God is 
here now to protect us and to punish you." _ With 
yells of frenzy each provoked the other to strike the 
fatal blow. Only the power of God restrained them. 
"I stood invulnerable beneath His invisible shield," 
declared Paton triumphantly. At that very moment 
there came a rushing, roaring sound like prolonged 
thunder or a great tidal wave. It was the tornado, 
the terror of every island inhabitant. In fury it 
broke upon them, the high wind beating the flames 
away from the house, rapidly consuming the church, 
and the torrent of rain checking further spread of 
fire that night. The roar of the wind, the blackness 
of the sky, and the deluge of rain, together with the 
crackling flames, produced a scene so appalling that 
the savages lowered their weapons and exclaimed in 
awe, "That is Jehovah's rain! Truly their Jehovah 
God is fighting for them and helping them. Let us 
away!" In panic they hastened away and dis- 
appeared in the bush. Going to the door of the house, 
Paton cried in a voice of awe and triumph, "Open 
and let me in. I am now all alone." 

When morning broke, the howl of the savages was 
heard anew. Daylight had dispelled their terror of 



The King of the Cannibals 59 

the night and they were returning to their deadly 
work. Suddenly above the shrieks of the mob came 
a new, shrill cry. Was it a dream? Were senses so 
distraught by danger that they conjured up this 
ecstatic sound? No, louder and clearer it came as 
watchers on the beach passed on the thrilling cry, 
"Sail O! Sail O!" From his window Paton looked 
out to sea and there it was, no phantom sail, but a 
real and substantial ship steering straight toward 
shore. It was an English vessel sent from Aneityum 
to rescue the imperilled missionaries on Tanna. 

There remains but one story more to be told here, 
out of that vast collection of stories which make up 
Paton's biography. For the other episodes in his 
long and eventful life the reader is referred to that 
engrossing volume aforementioned, The Story of 
John G. Paton. In the year 1886, after an absence 
of four years, Paton returned to the New Hebrides 
to open a mission on the island of Aniwa, adjoining 
Tanna. Several new missionaries accompanied him 
on the mission ship "Dayspring," which his efforts 
had secured. Sailing here and there among the 
islands, landing the missionaries at their different 
settlements, the natives beheld in amazement the 
return of the Christians to the scene of former per- 
secution and bloodshed. "How is this?" they cried. 
"We slew or drove them all away! We plundered 
their houses and robbed them. Had we been so 
treated nothing would have made us return. But 
they come back with a beautiful new ship and with 
more and more missionaries. If their God makes 
them do all that, we may well worship Him too." 
And so one island after another, cannibal islands 



60 A Noble Army 

among them, was prepared to welcome the mis- 
sionary and the chiefs pledged their protection. 
Who will dare say that any race or nation, savage or 
civilized, is so hardened that it cannot respond to 
the manifestation of Christian love? 

The island of Aniwa is a flat coral island with no 
hills to attract the clouds, and a consequent scarcity 
of rain. Without the delicious juice of the cocoanut, 
life would have been difficult to sustain on this dry 
and thirsty island, where no water was to be found. 
One day, surrounded by a crowd of incredulous 
natives, Paton began to dig down through sand and 
coral in search of water. "O Missi!" cried the old 
chief in remonstrance, "Rain comes only from above. 
How could you expect our island to send up showers 
of rain from below ?" 

"Fresh water does come upspringing from the earth 
in my land at home," answered Paton. "I hope to 
see it here also." 

Then the old chief grew concerned and in sober 
voice replied, "Missi, your head is going wrong; 
you are losing something or you would not talk wild 
like that! Don't let our people hear you talking 
about going down into the earth for rain, or they will 
never listen to your word or believe you again." 
But Paton gathered up his tools, pick, spade and 
bucket, American axe to serve for hammer and 
crowbar, and set to work. In pity mingled with 
curiosity, the natives stood around and watched, 
while the old chief mourned and said, "Poor Missi! 
That's the way with all who go mad. There's no 
driving of a notion out of their heads." 



The King of the Cannibals Gi 

Fatigued by the tropical sun sooner than he ex- 
pected, Paton beguiled the natives to help him by 
the promise of an English fish-hook to each man who 
brought up three buckets of earth from the hole. 
Fish-hooks disappeared all too quickly while the hole 
deepened all too slowly. At last twelve feet had 
been laboriously excavated when the next morning 
alas! one whole side had caved in. Then Paton set 
his wits to work and devised a pulley and block by 
which he and his helpers hoisted the bucket to the 
surface, emptied and lowered it. Day after day the 
slow toil went on, "my heart almost sinking with the 
sinking of the well." In these words Paton recalled 
the great occasion. "The phrase, 'living water/ 
'living water,' kept chiming through my soul like 
music from God, as I dug and hammered away." 
When he reached a depth of thirty feet, earth and 
coral began to be suspiciously damp. Water must 
certainly be not far below. But would it be fresh 
or salt? That was the crucial question. 

"Tomorrow," said Paton to the old chief, "tomor- 
row I think Jehovah God will give us water from that 
hole!" 

"No, Missi," came the sorrowful reply, "you will 
never see rain coming up from the earth on this 
island. If you reach water you will drop through in- 
to the sea and sharks will eat you." 

"Come tomorrow," answered Paton with suppress- 
ed excitement. At break of day he arose and de- 
scended the well. There in the centre he dug a nar- 
row hole two feet deep, and in rushed a stream of 
water, muddy, to be sure, but water notwithstanding. 
With trembling hand he raised it to his lips and 



62 A Noble Army 

tasted. "It was fresh! It was living water from 
Jehovah's well." He almost fell on his knees there 
on the muddy bottom of the well to thank the Lord 
for this great blessing. 

As soon as the mud had settled a little he filled a 
jug with the precious fluid and ascended the ladder 
to the waiting people. In superstitious dread they 
gathered around, while the old chief shook the jug 
to see if its contents would spill, felt the liquid with 
his finger, and then cautiously tasted and swallowed 
it "Rain! Rain!" he shouted. "Yes, it is rain. 
But how did you get it?" 

"Jehovah my God gave it out of His own earth in 
answer to our labors and prayers," replied Paton. 
"Go and see it springing up for yourselves." 

Nimble and fearless as these people were in climb- 
ing the highest trees on the island, there was not one 
who dared venture alone to the edge of the well and 
gaze down into its depths. But they devised a way 
to meet the situation. Grasping each other by the 
hand, they formed a long line, allowing the man in 
front to peer down into the well and pass to the rear, 
and so on until each man had his turn. When they 
had all seen the rain in the earth, they were "weak 
with wonder" and the old chief made this solemn 
comment, "Wonderful, wonderful is the work of 
your Jehovah God. The world is turned upside 
down since Jehovah came to Aniwa! Missi, what 
can we do to help you now?" 

With a will the people fetched coral blocks from 
the shore and, under the missionary's direction, cut 
and squared them and placed each stone in position 



The King of the Cannibals 63 

until a solid wall was built, three feet thick, thirty- 
four feet deep, and eight feet wide at the top. With a 
flooring of wood, a windlass and bucket, and a fence 
to enclose it, Paton's well became the chief landmark 
of Aniwa, the pride of the people and their greatest 
material blessing. 

On the Sunday following the completion of the 
well, the old chief Namakei preached a sermon to a 
great throng of listeners. With eyes flashing and 
hand flourishing a tomahawk to enforce his words, 
he spoke as follows : 

"Friends of Namakei, men and women and chil- 
dren of Aniwa, listen to my words! Who ever ex- 
pected to see rain coming up through the earth? 
It has always come from the clouds. Wonderful is 
the work of this Jehovah God. No god of Aniwa 
ever answered prayer as the Missi's God has done. 
Something here in my heart tells me that the Jehovah 
God does exist, the Invisible One, whom we never 
heard of nor saw till the Missi brought Him to our 
knowledge. The coral has been removed, the land 
has been cleared away, and lo ! the water rises. In- 
visible till this day, yet all the same it was there. 
So I, your chief, do now firmly believe that when I 
die, when the bits of coral and the heaps of dust are 
removed which now blind my old eyes, I shall then 
see the invisible Jehovah God with my soul, not less 
surely than I have seen the rain from the earth below. 
From this day, my people, I must worship the God 
who has opened for us the well, and who fills us with 
rain from below. Henceforth I am a follower of 
Jehovah God. Let every man that thinks with me 
go now and fetch the idols of Aniwa, the gods which 



64 A Noble Army 

our fathers feared, and cast them down at Missi's 
feet. The Jehovah God has sent us rain from the 
earth, why should He not also send His Son from 
Heaven? Namakei stands up for Jehovah." 

That afternoon and through the following weeks, 
chiefs and people came to the mission house loaded 
with idols of wood and stone, which they left in huge 
piles to be burned or cast into the deep sea. Some- 
times with sobs and again with shouts of joy, they 
surrendered the gods which their fathers had wor- 
shipped and committed themselves to the service of 
the God whose name was often heard upon their lips, 
"Jehovah." Paton's well marked the beginning of 
a new social order for Aniwa, when the church bell 
called to worship on Sundays, and the tavaka, canoe- 
drum, summoned to school on week days not only 
the boys and girls, but all the inhabitants of every 
village. Toward sunset each day the tavaka was 
heard again, and under the banyan trees of their 
several villages the people met for evening prayers in 
the very places where once they had gathered for 
their cannibal feasts. 

When Dr. Paton returned to England in his later 
years he was greeted half in jest, half in ^ reverent 
earnestness, as the "King of the Cannibals." In the 
deepest sense the words were true. He had been the 
great-hearted friend and leader of the deluded, savage 
peoples of the New Hebrides, who, before the mis- 
sionaries came, had never received a helping hand 
from the civilized world. Even the Tannese, who 
despised and rejected their first missionary, learned 
in after years to heed the message he had originally 
taught them. The adventurous, consecrated life of 



The King of the Cannibals 65 

John G. Paton brought a new world of interest and 
aspiration to this portion of the human family. 
Along the moorland roads of Scotland the quieter 
life of James Paton, his beloved father, brought a 
like inspiration to hundreds cf humble homes, for he, 
too, was a missionary though he never travelled far 
beyond his native village. In his character, as in 
his face, was that rare, apostolic beauty which made 
his oldest son exclaim with the passionate purpose 
which determined his life, "He walked with God, 
why may not I?" 



CHAPTER IV. 

The Hermit of the Himalayas 
"M wait for His orders: 1 

Mary Reed. 



CHAPTER IV. 

The Hermit of the Himalayas 

There are boys who feel in their blood the call of 
the wild, the sea, or the frontier, and there are girls 
who feel stirring within them the impulse to do ad- 
venturous deeds in the difficult and dangerous 
places of earth. The boys go to sea as sailors or to 
remote regions to explore or settle, and sometimes 
both boys and girls choose the career of foreign 
missionary, with its novelty and adventure and high 
seriousness. Before the Student Volunteer Move- 
ment brought to students of the country the chal- 
lenge of foreign lands, a girl in Ohio was moved by 
some compelling claim to give her life to India. She 
had heard of the narrow, jail-bird lives her sister 
women were forced to live, confined within the 
zenanas, or female quarters, of Hindu homes, with 
little or no occupation to relieve their monotonous 
days. Such a bored, pitiful existence thrust upon 
them by no fault of their own save that of being 
women! Their condition of arrested growth, brain 
at a standstill, body deprived of athletic develop- 
ment, awakened a responsive interest in the mind of 
Mary Reed as she taught the boys and girls of the 
American public school to think and play. What 
variety and scope her life afforded compared with the 
stunted women of India, most of them unable to read 
or write and branded unfit for instruction, no better 
than donkey or cow! 



68 A Noble Army 

In 1884 Mary Reed received her appointment as 
missionary and was sent to Cawnpore on the Ganges, 
a city of evil memories in the history of British rule 
in India. There in 1857 occurred those dreadful 
scenes in connection with the Sepoy rebellion, when 
more than a hundred English women and children 
were betrayed and massacred and their bodies, dead 
and dying, thrown into a well fifty feet deep. To-day 
a white marble angel marks the site of the infamous 
deed, a token of penitence and promise of harmony 
between the alien races. Perhaps the white angel 
took human shape when Mary Reed found her life 
work in India. 

After four years in Cawnpore and a year in a girls' 
boarding school in Gonda the new missionary was 
driven home to the United States in an effort to re- 
gain her health. In a bustling American city, far 
removed from the droning life of the Orient, Mary 
Reed met one of the most terrible tests which can 
possibly come to a human being. It was evident 
that some obscure, baffling disease was developing 
in her system, which doctors were unable to diagnose. 
In the light of a poignant memory she herself de- 
tected its nature. During her five years in India 
she had for a few weeks dwelt in the lofty regions of 
the Himalaya mountains, not far from a settlement 
of lepers. Stories of their pitiful, outcast condition 
haunted her mind, until by a flash of intuition she 
recognized not only the identity of her disease, but 
the reason for its appearance. By such a marked 
and singular preparation she was set apart for service 
among those homeless people, exiled from family and 
every inhabited zone of earth. Conceive what a dis- 




BRIGANDS IN EASTERN TURKEY 




A NATIVE CART 

The Wheel is Made from a Solid Board and its Creak 
Can Be Heard a Long Way Off 



The Hermit of the Himalayas 69 

co very like hers would mean ! A person conscious of 
impending blindness or deafness struggles to meet 
life bravely under the changed conditions. But what 
a radical readjustment was Mary Reed's! A unique 
affliction, the burden of which no one could fully 
understand, and which must isolate her perpetually 
from family, friends, and healthy human kind! 

In New York and later in London, famous special- 
ists agreed upon the nature of her disease, but no 
one, herself or physician, was ever able to trace its 
origin. That was a permanent mystery. Acutely 
realizing her situation and the distress it would cause 
at home, she resolved to slip away without disclosing 
the fatal secret. "If you will let me go without a 
special good-by," she said, "as though I were re- 
turning tomorrow, it will be so much easier for me." 
Confiding in her sister Rena only, she left home for 
India^ no word or look revealing the burden she bore 
upon her heart. 

At Canterbury, England, the secret ordeal was re- 
newed. There, in centuries past, leper pilgrims had 
crept to the shrine of Thomas a Becket, hoping to 
find health for their tortured bodies. Evidences of 
their pitiful presence were visible to this modern 
pilgrim who stood with a group of American tourists 
in the ancient church of St. Martin while the guide 
pointed out the "lepers' squint," so-called, a crevice 
in the heavy wall through which lepers were per- 
mitted to hear and see the service performed within. 
"Calmly Mary Reed stood there before us," wrote a 
friend who recalled the scene in the light of her later 
knowledge, "with a heavenly light in her eyes, not a 
muscle of her face betraying her heart's secret." 



70 A Noble Army 

In this uplifted mood she went back to India, under 
conditions, as she herself said, "in which no other 
missionary ever returned." 

Upon arrival she came to realize that her family 
must sooner or later be told the unwelcome news, or 
else be unduly perplexed, and so from Bombay she 
wrote home releasing Rena from the pledge of se- 
crecy. "I shall have the joy of ministering," so the 
letter read, "to a class of people, who, but for the 
preparation which has been mine for this special 
work, would have no helper at all; and while I am 
called apart among these needy creatures, who hun- 
ger and thirst for salvation, and for comfort and 
cheer, He, who has called me and prepared me, prom- 
ises me that He Himself will be to me as a little 
sanctuary where I am to abide, and, abiding in Him, 
I shall have a supply of all my need." 

Mary Reed was chosen for a special phase of hu- 
man ministry, a phase often overlooked or avoided by 
the world's benefactors, though so clearly empha- 
sized by the Master Benefactor in His earthly life. 
Francis of Assisi recognized the lepers' claim upon his 
sympathy on the day when in an impulse of ab- 
horrence he spurred his horse away from a leper on 
the highway, then repented and, turning about, 
leaped to the ground and touched the man's hand, 
giving him all the money his purse contained. 
Franciscan friars followed his lead and made lepers a 
special object of their ministry, visiting the many 
lazarettos existing in England and on the continent, 
and beginning the crusade which has largely ex- 
pelled the disease from Europe. Today the Mission 
for Lepers is trying, by scientific methods, to exter- 



The Hermit of the Himalayas 71 

minate the plague from the earth, especially from 
Asia, where most of the two million lepers of the 
world are congregated. In the Middle Ages in 
France, lepers were furnished with a uniform garb 
and a rattle to announce their approach; in Scotland 
they carried a bell or clapper and drew a cloth over 
their faces upon entering a town. In Palestine, in 
the time of our Lord, the cry "unclean" was forced 
upon their lips. The approved method today is to 
group them together in separate communities where 
with proper precautions, nurses, doctors, and other 
helpers may safely work among them. 

Among the foothills of the Himalayas, overlooking 
a lovely valley called Shor, is located an asylum for 
the lepers of Eastern Kumaun, a district which, in 
proportion to its size 5 contains more lepers than any 
other district of India. In this same bracing region 
Mary Reed had once made a visit, and had carried 
away an unforgettable memory of the five hundred 
lepers hidden in the neighboring mountains. Seven 
years later she found herself back in the same glorious 
surroundings of mountain and valley, the superin- 
tendent of an institution established two years after 
her first visit, for the benefit of that outcast leper 
colony. From Pithora in the Shor valley she climbed 
up to Chandag Heights where her bungalow was 
being built, to meet for the first time the men, women, 
and children who were to be her future charge. It 
was a scene never to be forgotten. The crippled, dis- 
figured people assembled while she told them briefly 
of the call she had received from God, and the seal of 
commission He had laid upon her. Touched by her 
story and the angelic light upon her face, her hearers 



72 A Noble Army 

broke down and wept, understanding, as none others 
could, the peculiar suffering she must bear. Not 
long after this first meeting she went to live in the 
bungalow built upon the crest of a range, 6,400 feet 
above the sea. From her verandah she looked east- 
ward into the Shor valley, a fertile land six square 
miles in extent, with many villages surrounded by 
trees and terraced fields of rice and wheat. A river 
with its tributaries twisted in and out the green val- 
ley, and across the centre stretched a band of low 
hills. On one of the central heights stood a group of 
buildings refreshing to the sight of the lonely Ameri- 
can woman, for they belonged to the Methodist 
Mission with which she was then connected. From 
the rear of her house she looked down upon another 
valley of equal charm, while away to the north she 
caught a thrilling vision of the Upper Himalayas, 
the loftiest mountains in all the world, whose very 
name, in Sanskrit, means the abode of snow. The 
scene of her banishment could not be surpassed. 

Seven more years passed and the sanitarium in 
the Himalayas had an interesting growth to record, 
thanks to the American superintendent. When 
Miss Reed went to Chandag in 1892, the lepers were 
housed in huts and stables and other impromptu 
quarters inadequate for their comfort. Her first 
move was to secure proper accommodations for the 
people whom she loved to call her "little ones" or 
more often "Chrises little ones." She purchased 
additional land, and in course of time built two good 
sized structures accommodating sixty men and boys, 
three smaller ones for women and girls, an isolation 
hospital for extreme cases with a dispensary attached 



The Hermit of the Himalayas 73 

and a boundary wall to enclose the property. She 
explored the mountains for water supply, and in an 
out-of-the-way place discovered a spring of clear 
water, which skillful engineering connected with the 
asylum. With flower seeds sent from the United 
States she made the mountainside gay with blossoms. 
A fragrant heliotrope bush grew near her door and 
vines netted her porch with their green tendrils. A 
vegetable garden and small chicken farm eked out 
the food supply which was always uncertain in this 
famine zone of the world. Jackals and porcupines 
added their raids to the repeated threats of famine. 

In her mountain settlement Miss Reed was house- 
keeper, ' head nurse, chaplain, secretary, and book- 
keeper, all in one. With but two native assistants 
she looked after the diet and simple medical treat- 
ment of her patients, taught them to read, and held 
religious services, prayer groups, and Bible classes 
among them. For the health of their souls she was 
most deeply concerned. Out of their physical and 
mental misery she longed to help them find the "peace 
that passeth understanding," and many responded 
to her gentle solicitude. In five years' time, sixty- 
seven out of eighty-five had confessed their faith in 
Christ and received baptism. The old quarrels 
which once disturbed the calm of the mountains and 
summoned the superintendent many times a day to 
settle, had given way to happier relations with one 
another. 

In addition to her work at Chandag, Miss Reed was 
district missionary for the Methodist Society and in 
that capacity supervised six village schools and three 



74 A Noble Army 

Sunday-schools, directed a group of Biblewomen, and 
taught six pupils in their homes. Riding or walking 
she covered a circuit of forty miles. "She gets up 
as a rule in time to bid the stars farewell," wrote one 
who once spent a year at Chandag with Miss Reed. 
Sometimes her letters would be dated "Dawn of 
Day," and once in a letter to her sister Rena she 
apologized for her tardy awakening, confessing that 
she arose only one half hour before sunrise ! 

In 1898 Miss Reed was released from her connec- 
tion with the Methodist Mission to give undivided 
service to the Mission for Lepers under whose aus- 
pices she had gone to Chandag. Increasing respon- 
sibility at the asylum and her own condition of 
health had made this step imperative. "I have 
some very trying sieges," she wrote in the year 1897, 
"though there is no cause for anxiety. I am kept 
through all — His love satisfieth." Later in the 
same year she acknowledged the inroads of disease: 
"My throat is becoming much affected by disease, 
and is often very painful, and I feel as if I could not 
talk and sing more than I do in my work among my 
own people. I am becoming a fellow-sufferer with 
many of them. . . . They are all praying 
much for me lately and dread to see me suffer." 

For seven years Miss Reed had remained at her 
mountain abode, sometimes going as far as Pithora 
in the Shor valley or, at rare intervals, to the lonely 
station at Bhot where a friend lived and worked. 
But in 1899 she received a welcome summons to the 
outside world in the shape of an invitation to attend 
the annual conference of Methodist missionaries of 
North India. Packing her camp outfit she set forth 



The Hermit of the Himalayas 75 

on the eight days' journey through her "world of 
mountains," until she reached Kathgodam at the 
base of the Himalayas, whence she travelled by rail 
to Lucknow, another outstanding name in the event- 
ful history of British India. The welcome which 
greeted the hermit missionary was worthy a royal 
guest. But in her heart was simple thankfulness 
that she could once more reenter the world's busy 
life in company with her fellow workers. When the 
presiding bishop asked her to address the assembly 
she stood before that great audience and modestly 
said, "Ham git gawen," Let us sing. All present 
joined in the Hindustani translation of the ancient 
hymn, 

"O for a thousand tongues to sing 
My great Redeemer's praise!" 
There was an unescapable sense of loneliness in- 
volved in this return to city life, for some people 
could not avoid shrinking from association with one 
who was known to have contracted the most dreaded 
disease on earth, though signs of its presence were 
scarcely apparent. With fine regard for the feelings 
of others, Miss Reed contrived to spare them anxiety. 
But her very, presence at Lucknow was proof of the 
arrested condition of the disease which, in her faith 
and philosophy, she attributed to the "divine health" 
continually received. For some years she had re- 
frained from all medicines for herself though using 
them freely for others, reasoning that she had re- 
ceived the affliction from God and would leave it in 
God's hand. Outward traces of disease disappeared 
so completely that physicians pronounced her prac- 
tically cured, though she herself was at times con- 



J 6 A Noble Army 

scious of its presence in her system. "I know I have 
divine health given in answer to prayer/' she wrote, 
"the prayer of a multitude of hearts, and that's 
enough for me." For thirty years Mary Reed, her- 
self a leper, has worked twelve to fourteen hours a 
day in the asylum at Chandag, and in the year 1920 
was told by friends that she "never looked so well in 
her life." 

There were compensations in Miss Reed's exile 
which she herself would be the first to acknowledge. 
There was the wonder of her mountain environment, 
"my lofty and lovely retreat," as she described it; 
and there was the gratitude of an outcast, afflicted 
people. In the leper's lot the hardest blow falls when 
families have to separate. At Chandag there was a 
father with his two children and a niece. From the 
niece, who was the first to be infected, contagion had 
spread to the father, the boy and girl in succession. 
One by one they had been removed from normal sur- 
roundings to the isolation of the asylum. It was a 
sorry day for Rupwa when he had to leave the boys' 
school with its interesting activities to go into the 
leper's banishment. And when Dipah, the girl, 
showed symptoms of infection her mother cried in 
despair, "They have all got it now and are all at the 
asylum; I must go there, too, I cannot remain here 
alone." With difficulty was she persuaded to safe- 
guard her health and abide where she was. It is a 
frequent occurrence to find fathers and mothers in 
quarantine while their children escape contagion and 
are cared for by missionaries, often in homes founded 
especially for their benefit. For a mother to give 
up the care of her own child is always a tragedy, and 




T3- 
1-1 

pq 






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PQ 

<u 
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w 

<u 

H 



The Hermit of the Himalayas 77 

to have the little one brought on visits to the asylum 
and be able only to speak to him from a safe distance, 
never to touch or fondle him, is to renew and sharpen 
the hurt. But the consolation comes in the assur- 
ance that the child will escape the pain and disfigure- 
ment the parents have to bear. 

Into the broken, bereaved lives of Hindu lepers 
Mary Reed has brought physical relief and the 
mental comfort of her sympathy and unique under- 
standing. To the "little ones" of her flock she has 
been a gentle shepherd, leading them to rest their 
bruised, aching lives in the Infinite Compassion she 
nas tested for herself and revealed to others. The 
little girl, Dipah, bearing her terrible sufferings with 
patient submission; Gauri Datt, a young high-caste 
Brahmin, reading the Bible with eagerness; Kaliyani, 
a young woman, thanking God that He had brought 
this disease upon her, as it had been the means of 
leading her to Christ; Chandra, an older woman, 
conquering her habits of selfishness so completely 
that she could be trusted with the oversight of other 
inmates; Har Singh, who had been a leper since he 
was six years old, becoming so well versed in the 
new religion that he was able at seventeen to teach 
classes of men 'and boys; these are typical results of 
Miss Reed's ministry at Chandag. 

In every leper institution the benefits reach far 
beyond the community directly affected. In one 
province in India whole villages discarded their idols 
and accepted the Christian religion. This remark- 
able change was traced to the influence of a leper 
home in the vicinity. According to Hindu belief, 
the man who contracted leprosy was cursed of the 



78 A Noble Army 

gods; in a previous existence he had committed some 
terrible sin for which he was now being punished; 
consequently harsh treatment was in keeping with the 
will of the gods. A century ago a leper could be 
stoned, burned, or buried alive, until the decree of 
the British government abolished both widow and 
leper burning. Leprosy was the utmost calamity to 
befall a man. Hence for a religion to answer its 
call was to prove that religion genuine. Wherever 
the Mission for Lepers seeks to relieve the social waste 
and personal misery of leprosy, as in its model vil- 
lages at Purulia, India, and Chiengmai, Siam, or at 
Chandag in the Himalayas, it is a certain agency for 
promoting "goodwill among men." "Uncle Sam's 
Leper Colony" in the Philippine Islands counts as 
one of the forward movements for securing race 
harmony. For a strong nation to help a weaker in 
combating a national peril like leprosy, is to exceed 
political treaties in establishing friendly relations. 

This practical phase of world reconstruction could 
be developed much more rapidly if churches and 
governments were alive to its necessity. In India 
there are said to be more than one hundred thousand 
lepers, but the Mission for Lepers provides for seven 
thousand only. It has ninety- two centres of relief 
in a world where two million lepers are estimated to 
exist. By the scientific methods of quarantine em- 
ployed in the Philippines and other leper colonies, 
it has been proved that the spread of leprosy can be 
quickly controlled. It could be reduced one-half 
in ten years and utterly wiped out in a few years 
more. With such definite results assured, it should 
be the immediate task of governments and 



The Hermit of the Himalayas 79 

churches to destroy this menace to society. 

Meantime at Chandag Heights Mary Reed is at 
this present time superintending one of the finest 
leper institutions in the world. She now occupies a 
new bungalow, "Sunny Crest Cottage," built to re- 
place the original house which was damaged by earth- 
quake. With its casement windows, cement walls, 
and tiled roof, and its lofty location, it resembles a 
Colorado bungalow in the Rockies. In the year 
1902 Miss Reed had a happy respite from exile in a 
journey to the Holy Land, with its unique appeal 
to her interest. But in 1906 came the outstanding 
event of her later life for in that year she travelled 
home to America and spent a month with her aged 
mother, brothers, and sisters. That home-coming 
after fifteen years of enforced absence counts among 
the rare experiences which come to mortals some- 
times when they have abandoned hope of their 
realization. 

Always it has been difficult to persuade Miss Reed 
to talk or write about herself. Her peculiar reticence 
could not often be surmounted by family or friends. 
To her sister Rena she once wrote, "You dear home 
folks well know how much I dislike writing of the 
two handsful of precious work entrusted to me." 
To any would-be biographer she gives the caution, 
"Let no word of praise be said of Mary Reed." 
But we who write or read her life will perforce record 
in our memories the fact that an American woman 
spent more than thirty years in the Himalaya moun- 
tains among the outcasts of an alien race, trusting 
her God to supply strength for the daily need. 



CHAPTER V. 

The Veteran of Van 

"If you can meet with Triumph and 

Disaster, 
And treat those two imposters just the 

same; 
Or watch the things you gave your life 

to, broken, 
And stoop and build y em up again with 

worn-out tools — " 

Rudyard Kipling. 



CHAPTER V. 

The Veteran of Van 

If you could choose the scene for a modern tale of 
adventure, what would it be? The fabulous old 
walled China of Kubla Khan, the perfumed palaces 
of Arabian Nights, Robinson Crusoe's island, the 
open sea and the ship of Kidnapped, or the prairies 
of the United States where Cooper roams with his 
Indian braves? Which? Or, knowing these so well, 
would you prefer a region not often described by 
story writers, seldom visited by tourists, a region of 
wild scenery, wild tribes, and dangerous routes of 
travel, the eastern frontier of Turkey near the bor- 
ders of Russia and Persia? If you should leave the 
steamer at Beirut, Syria, travel four days on a slow 
train to Mardin, Turkey, ride eight days on horseback 
you would come to the famous old stronghold of the 
Kurds, the city of Bitlis, and ten miles beyond you 
would stand on the shore of a huge lake, 5,500 feet 
above the sea, the blue salt lake of Van. High 
mountains girdle the lake, some being extinct vol- 
canoes, like Nimroud Dagh on the northern shore 
with its crater five miles in diameter. Riding along 
the southern shore, you would travel eighty miles, 
shadowed all the way by great mountains where the 
snows of one winter linger to merge with the snows 
of the next. Kurdish tribes, the fiercest of all the 
mountain races, infest these passes and threaten 
traveller and settler alike. 



82 A Noble Army 

Along this amazing route you come at length to a 
perpendicular ledge of rock, three hundred feet high 
and three-quarters of a mile long, on the crest of 
which stands a time-worn castle and minaret, and 
at whose base crouches an old, walled city. It is 
the ancient city of Van, built, so the legend runs, by 
the queen Semiramis, as a summer resort for her 
Babylonian subjects. Cuneiform inscriptions on 
the city wall and an inscription of Xerxes on the 
south side of the castle, establish the city's claim to 
antiquity. In the course of centuries Van became 
the seat of the kingdom of Armenia, where its leading 
bishops, kings, and queens lived and died, their tombs 
remaining unto this day. 

Into the walled city of Van, with its narrow streets 
and mud houses, its bazaars and mosques, there came 
one day in the year 1871 two young men from Ameri- 
ca. Their presence excited no little attention as 
they rode their horses along the stone paved street 
and stopped in front of the khan, or inn, where they 
secured lodging. The next day when they appeared . 
on the street, a crowd of boys followed at their heels 
crying, "Prot, Prot," a nickname for Protestant and 
a term of derision in that part of the world. The 
following Sunday a service was held at the khan, 
which proceeded quietly enough until a Turkish 
teacher, a venerable man with long, white beard, 
entered the room, took up a Turkish book and 
began to read aloud to his followers. This mark of 
disrespect acted like a signal to the crowd outside 
who began throwing sticks and rubbish into the 
room. The disturbance grew until a Turkish colonel 
chanced to pass, inquired the cause of the tumult, 



The Veteran of Van 83 

examined the passports of the strangers, and left 
soldiers on guard. Such was the character of the 
first Protestant service in Van. 

At the afternoon meeting, events, though not so 
spectacular, were fully as interesting. Thirty lead- 
ing men among the Armenians came of their own ac- 
cord to discuss religion with the Protestants. A live 
discussion was going on when a priest and vartabed 
(teacher) of the Gregorian church appeared and 
announced a message from their superiors. If the 
foreigners had come as guests for a few days and 
would keep silent, well and good; but, if they attempt- 
ed to speak to the people they would be required to 
leave. "We are not guests," answered the Ameri- 
cans, "for we are in our own hired room; we have 
not come to remain now, but next spring we shall 
come with our families to stay. As to keeping still, 
God has given us mouths to speak with and we shall 
not keep them shut and you cannot. We have no 
fear. We have firmans from the Sultan and com- 
mands from the King of kings; why should we fear 
you?" Upon this unexpected retort, priest and 
vartabed turned and went away, crestfallen to dis- 
cover they could not frighten the newcomers into 
submission. 

This August Sunday in 1871 marked the first at- 
tempt of Dr. George C. Raynolds of Chicago, ac- 
companied by Mr. Wheeler of Harpoot, Turkey, to 
open a Protestant mission in Van, with its Moham- 
medan mosques and Gregorian churches, and its 
medley of races, Jews, Turks, Armenians, and the 
lawless Kurdish tribes. It was a beginning both 
favorable and foreboding. Old and young, friends, 



84 A Noble Army 

foes, princes, peasants had come voluntarily to attend 
service while at the same time the Gregorian church 
had stretched out its hostile hand. Its hostility was 
something to be dreaded as well as expected, for it 
was the national church of Armenia, the oldest 
national church in existence. According to tradi- 
tion, Christianity was first preached in Armenia by 
Thaddeus, one of the twelve disciples; at the end of 
the third century it spread through the kingdom and 
became the national religion under its first bishop, 
Saint Gregory, for whom the church was named. 
Despite its inspiring origin and early history the 
Gregorian church lost its power and shrivelled into 
dead formulas and ceremonies. Its services were 
conducted in a classical language which only the 
learned understood, and there was no Bible in the 
spoken tongue of the people. In Van as in every 
Turkish city there was room for a living church to 
make Christ real to His people who had missed the 
way. 

A year and a half after the first prospecting tour in 
Van, Dr. Raynolds came with his wife and two other 
missionary families to make the city their permanent 
home. They secured a house in the "Gardens," or 
residential section, which extended four or five miles 
on two sides of the city, and from which business men 
went every day into the walled town, quite in the 
manner of American commuters. George Raynolds 
was at this time a young man in the early thirties 
who had received a double training for his missionary 
career, having studied both theology and medicine, 
after taking his B. A. at Williams. He had been 
pastor of a church and he had been a practicing physi- 



The Veteran of Van 85 

cian in Chicago as well as surgeon in the United 
States navy. Mrs. Raynolds, whose maiden name 
was Martha Tinker, was a Mt. Holyoke graduate who 
had afterwards taught in a seminary in Chicago where 
it was she met the young physician whom she 
married and accompanied to Turkey. Under the 
poplar trees in the "Gardens" of Van, the husband 
and wife, with their traditions of New England, New 
York, and Chicago tried to adapt life to the puzzling 
customs of Eastern Turkey. Their first move was a 
bold one. On the very next Sunday after their ar- 
rival they held two meetings in their home, thereby 
disclosing at once the object of their coming. The 
statement sounds prosaic, but the fact was dramatic. 
Publicly to proclaim your views in a foreign city 
where scarcely a person believes as you do is no mean 
test of courage. Though it was an unpopular cause 
they preached, those first services were attended by 
no less than fifty in the forenoon and seventy-five in 
the afternoon. Exactly one week from the day she 
arrived in Van, Mrs. Raynolds opened rooms for 
a women's meeting, at the third session of which, 
thirty were present. The ice seemed to be quickly 
broken in this alien community, though for a long time 
the opening was not very wide. 

Before many months passed Dr. Raynolds began 
his preaching tours in the mountain regions sur- 
rounding Van. Adventure always attended these 
excursions abroad: in the winter, deep snows and 
blinding storms; at all seasons, rough, steep roads and 
dread of the Kurdish tribes whose ravages were all 
too often seen. The exciting event of each day was 
the search for a night's lodging found, perhaps, in a 



86 A Noble Army 

stable from which a herd of donkeys had just been 
turned out, or in a cavern so large that horses and 
men could both find shelter. Usually the mission- 
aries met with no hostile reception in these mountain 
villages, though occasionally old prejudices against 
foreigners and Protestants broke their bounds. One 
Sunday Dr. Raynolds walked over to Avants, the 
lake harbor of Van, to conduct service. As he went 
along the village street, which was twenty feet in 
width, women upon the low roofs began to throw 
stones and brickbats, hurling them so fast that it took 
artful dodging to escape. Running the gauntlet of 
these missiles, Dr. Raynolds found shelter in the 
house of Harootune, the Protestant, but scarcely 
had he disappeared inside before boys scrambled to 
the roof and commenced flinging sticks through the 
opening that served for window. In company with 
Harootune he ventured again into the street and 
started in search of the village headman. Instantly 
a mob of men and boys surrounded him, and for the 
entire length of the village street, nearly three- 
quarters of a mile, he was pursued by fully a hundred 
boys who shouted and jeered and flung cakes of ice 
and stones. From the housetops children added their 
volley of dirt and garbage. It was a moving picture 
scene of rapid and dramatic action. One lone for- 
eigner pursued by a whole village of angry people! 
At last he reached the headman's house and was 
admitted while that official made a show of punish- 
ing the offenders. The following day complaint was 
made to the pasha, who summoned the chief men of 
the village, demanded reason for the uproar, and 



The Veteran of Van 87 

exacted a pledge that such conduct should not be 
repeated. 

In the city of Van violent outbreaks became less 
frequent, though Gregorian priests denounced the 
missionaries, telling the people they would be cursed 
if they attended the Protestant service. In spite of 
priestly opposition, interest increased and in four 
years' time a little church was formed with a mem- 
bership of ten, a promise of that larger church to 
follow. Boys and young men were among the first 
to respond to the virile message of the missionaries. 
Taveet (David) and Essahag (Isaac) were two Ar- 
menian boys who braved their parents' wrath and 
came often to the chapel service. The enraged 
father of one of the boys called a neighborhood 
tribunal before which the lads were summoned and 
required to answer for their conduct. But this or- 
deal did not deaden their interest. As further penal- 
ty, malicious neighbors cut off the water supply 
from Essahag's garden, but still he refused to yield. 
Markar, the little brother of David, came under the 
influence of themissionaries, and, because of the truths 
he had learned, chose a whipping rather than work on 
Sunday. The two boys were forbidden to go to 
chapel or to read the Protestant books. Upon re- 
ceiving the latter command, Taveet flung back the 
reply, "Their books are good and I must read them. 
If there is not room in your house for those books, 
there is not room for me." It so happened that 
Taveet was a capable lad whose earnings the father 
could not afford to lose, so he ceased to press the 
demand about the books, though sternly insisting 
they should not enter the chapel again. Later on 



88 A Noble Army 

the two boys decided they must disobey their father's 
command and follow their conscience which led them 
straight to the Protestant chapel. To their surprise 
their father followed them there and sat meekly 
through the service. After that day his opposition 
gradually broke down before the determined interest 
of his boys. There were many other young men and 
boys in those early years who felt the appeal of Dr. 
Raynolds' manly life, and forsook their former asso- 
ciations, sometimes their homes and friends, to follow 
the Master he taught them to love. 

In the midst of these increasing labors, church, 
boys* school, village touring, Dr. Raynolds met with 
an adventure which nearly cut short his promising 
career. In the month of May, 1883, he was return- 
ing from a meeting in the distant village of Hava- 
doric, accompanied by Mr. Knapp of Bitlis. It was 
not a lonely mountain region over which their route 
lay, but a well-travelled road across the Moosh plain. 
For this road and this season of the year, no guard 
was thought necessary, and the two Americans set 
out for the fifty-mile ride with only their four 
attendants. Spending the first night in a Kurdish 
village, they mounted their horses and started along 
the road some thirty minutes ahead of their escort. 
Around a bend in the road, which made for a few rods 
a secluded stretch, they came upon three Kurds, one 
of whom was singing a loud, weird song. Dr. Ray- 
nolds had already dismounted to lead his horse down 
hill, when, to his amazement, the roisterous Kurd 
ceased his song, walked boldly towards him, and 
without a word began beating him over the head with 
a drawn sword. Furiously the blows fell until six 



The Veteran of Van 89 

ugly gashes on head and face were streaming blood. 
To defend himself, instinctively he raised his hands, 
and hands, head, and face became torn and bloody. 
At the same time another Kurd had assaulted Mr. 
Knapp, beating him on the head with a club, forcing 
him off his horse and pulling him by his beard along 
the road. Both victims were dragged into the bushes 
and there searched for valuables, being nearly choked 
to death in the process. Bandages were then tied 
over their eyes, their hands tied behind them and 
their feet together, and there they were left for an un- 
certain deliverance. Motionless and still they lay 
until the brigands had passed out of hearing, when by 
desperate efforts they untied the knots that bound 
them. Presently voices were heard on the highway, 
but they dared neither move nor call lest their as- 
sailants had returned. The speakers were in fact 
their own belated attendants who went on to the 
next village and not finding the Americans returned 
to search. Upon discovering their plight they set 
up a loud wail of horror. "And indeed I must have 
presented a study for a painter," remarked Dr. Ray- 
nolds in relating the experience, "my head, face, and 
hands were rudely swathed in bloody clothes; every 
visible inch of skin on face or hands was stained, while 
beard and tattered coat and shirt were already stiffen- 
ed with blood." Under a shed in the presence of a 
noisy crowd of Kurds, Dr. Raynolds dressed the 
wounds of his companion, then, with a small mirror, 
his pocket surgical case, and the help of one of his 
men, he sewed up his own wounds, including that deep, 
vicious gash on the top and back of his head. Their 
wounds dressed and bandaged, the two men mounted 



90 A Noble Army 

their horses and rode eight hours until they came to 
Mr. Knapp's house in Bitlis, The sequel to this tale 
remains to be told in a subsequent paragraph. 

It was fortunate that the Kurds did not slash Dr. 
Raynolds to death that May morning on the Moosh 
plain, for the greatest deeds of his life were yet to be 
done. Into his career all the big catastrophes of 
earth seem to have been crowded — war, famine, pesti- 
lence, and massacre. There was the Russo-Turkish 
war in '77 with the years of famine that followed. 
There was a raging epidemic of cholera in '93 when 
the doctor missionary did such splendid service that 
Gregorian priests forgot their old enmity and invited 
him to lecture in their church upon cholera preven- 
tion and treatment. In '95 and '96 came the first 
Armenian massacre, a fury of bloodshed which one 
shudders even to think of, but which some mission- 
aries in Turkey have twice had to experience, for the 
crime was repeated in 191 5. For months shops were 
closed and people went stealthily about in hourly 
dread of loot, fire, or sword. In a home letter Mrs. 
Raynolds described the prolonged suspense: "Every 
morning I have dressed so as to be ready for flight 
or for wandering around in the cold, and at night 
have made everything ready to dress hastily in case 
of an attack." In the poverty and distress which 
attended the general panic, the missionaries came at 
once to the rescue and, by their system of food dis- 
tribution and industrial relief, gave aid to more than 
fifteen thousand people. Four great ovens were in 
operation using fifty bushels of wheat daily and in- 
dustries were started which employed more than a 
thousand workers. In this emergency the people 



The Veteran of Van 91 

discovered how much they owed to the little group of 
foreigners who had come to live in Van for no gain 
unto themselves, but simply to help their brothers of 
another race. It was a striking expression of the 
Gospel they taught. "Nothing can hurt you," the 
people cried when danger threatened, "the prayers of 
thousands of poor people make you invulnerable." 
Out of the massacre grew an enterprise which was 
perhaps the most remarkable work performed by the 
Van missionaries, the care and training of Armenian 
orphans whose parents were killed by the Turks. It 
was a statesmanlike plan as Dr. and Mrs. Raynolds 
conceived and worked it out. In the year 1900 a 
visitor came over the border from Persia, an Ameri- 
can resident who sent home to the United States an 
account of the work at Van. "It has been a great 
privilege," he wrote, "to see the wonderful work 
which is being carried on here by these two giants, 
Dr. Raynolds and his wife. Think of a man as at 
once station treasurer, distributing relief all over the 
plain, and keeping the accounts involved, sending the 
reports that are required, keeping up preaching serv- 
ices in two places, four miles apart, superintending 
the care of five hundred orphans and four hundred 
day pupils, the five hundred not only cared for physi- 
cally, but taught and so utilized as in part to pay 
their own expenses. For example, there are trades 
taught, and half the day is given to trades and half 
to study. All the cloth used is woven by the children 
in the looms on the place, the skins of the oxen and 
sheep eaten are cured and boys make them up into 
shoes of three grades. Carpentering and black- 
smithing are also done. All the food needed is pre- 



92 A Noble Army 

pared on the place, thus training up another corps 
as bakers and cooks. So you have every day, being 
taught how to live useful Christian lives, more than 
five hundred children. Alone, without associates, 
Dr. and Mrs. Raynolds have carried all these burdens 
until it is a wonder they have not broken down." 

If we could procure the graduate record of these 
Van orphans we should not only read some stirring 
tales, but we should perceive how far the influence of 
one man has reached. There would be stories of 
Gregorian villages transformed in character by the 
presence of the Christian teacher, a former Van 
student. Here and there would be found honor 
students who went to European and American uni- 
versities for further study. And in the United 
States at the present time we should discover former 
Van orphans, one a pastor of a Presbyterian church in 
California, and several studying to become doctors, 
nurses, engineers in preparation for the day when 
they shall be able to return to their own people. 
Some few are left in Turkey, and some, alas, the or- 
phans of one massacre have become the victims of 
the next. 

In 1904, twenty-one years after the encounter with 
brigands already described, an event took place 
directly connected with that historic episode. One 
day several boxes of peculiar shape and size arrived 
in Van, creating quite a stir among city officials be- 
cause of their mysterious' appearance. A plot against 
the government was suspected and officials and peo- 
ple watched narrowly when the boxes were opened 
and their contents disclosed. You couldn't guess 
what those great boxes contained. American ma- 



The Veteran of Van 93 

chinery for a Turkish windmill! Hitherto the 
water supply for the mission had come through clay 
pipes, a wholly inadequate system, especially since 
the growth of the orphanages. Dr. Raynolds set his 
mind upon a windmill and pump, the windmill to be 
large enough to do other work as well. The tower, 
which was built in Van, was a huge affair, seventy- 
five feet high with posts and braces made of green 
poplar, three times as heavy as the timber used for 
a similar purpose at home. Of necessity it had to 
be framed together on the ground, then hoisted into 
position. With the crude apparatus the mission- 
aries possessed, it was a difficult and dangerous job. 
With a pair of three-wheel pulley blocks, steel ropes 
and a tripod built above the small end, the tower was 
lifted as far as the tripod would permit. Then came 
the tug of war. From that angle it must be raised 
into upright position by means of levers followed by 
supports. The difficulty and risk were great. Four 
days they worked, and, when at last the tower sank 
slowly and surely into place, a great shout went up 
from the crowd of spectators. After the applause 
subsided, the Doxology was sung and from a low roof 
near by Dr. Raynolds offered a prayer of thanks- 
giving and dedication. It was an impressive and 
triumphant scene. For men who had no training 
as engineers to study out how the complicated ma- 
chinery of such a geared mill should be set up, and to 
direct the work so that no damage or accident befell, 
was proof of uncommon ingenuity. But the climax 
of the tale is this: the money with which Dr. Ray- 
nolds bought the windmill was part of the indemnity 
paid by the Turkish government for the assault made 



94 A Noble Army 

upon him by Kurds when he so nearly lost his life. 
That recompense money was not spent for his own 
comfort, but for the benefit of the Turkish city in 
which he dwelt! 

The same year the windmill came to Van, a new 
church was finished and dedicated, the remainder ot 
the indemnity fund being used in its construction. 
Smilingly, the Armenians would point to their fine 
large church and say, "The Turks built that for us!" 
There were now seven hundred members of the 
Protestant church, with a congregation which aver- 
aged nearly six hundred. The boys' school increased 
its enrolment until it reached about five hundred, 
while in the girls' school that number was exceeded. 
Student government was tried with the boys with 
great success. A hospital was built which cared for 
hundreds of patients, while beyond the city limits 
schools were established in eighteen villages. And at 
last, in 1913, the dream of Dr. Raynolds' life seemed 
about to come true, for in that year he came to the 
United States to raise money for a college in Van^ 
a genuine college of high academic standing to draw 
its students from the young men of Eastern Turkey, 
Persia, and the Russian Caucasus. What an amaz- 
ing record is this! To start with a hired room in a 
Turkish khan and in forty years to have acquired a 
church, hospital, windmill, school buildings, dwelling 
houses, and a college in prospect! 

In August, 1 9 14, Dr. Raynolds had obtained his 
funds for Van College and was ready to sail for Tur- 
key when — but all the world knows what happened 
in August^ 1914! Routes of travel were blocked, 
Turkey became an ally of Germany and Austria, and 



The Veteran of Van 95 

there was no way of return for the exiled missionary 
with his great plans and his homesick longing for the 
house in the "Gardens" of Van where he and his wife 
had lived for more than forty years. It was an 
anxious winter he spent in the United States, cut off 
by mines, submarines, and battlefronts from his wife 
and his dearest interests on earth. Letters were 
censored and brought only tantalizing hints of real 
conditions in Van. At last, in July, 191 5, came the 
startling message from Mrs. Raynolds, "You cannot 
come too soon." Finding a new route via Christiania 
and Petrograd, he set out at once for Van. All went 
well until he reached Petrograd when he heard that 
some catastrophe had happened at Van and the 
missionaries had fled to Tiflis. His wife, his asso- 
ciates, his life-time work! What had become of 
them all? With anxiety sharpened by every hour of 
travel he went on his way to Tiflis to find a little 
group of outcast missionaries mourning the loss of the 
eldest among them, the one who had been a mother 
to them all as well as to hundreds of Armenian or- 
phans. Upon Dr. Raynolds the blow fell most heavi- 
ly, for she who had died but two days before his ar- 
rival was his very own wife, his companion of nearly 
fifty years. He could look once more upon the dear, 
familiar face, but he was too late to hear her voice or 
to press her hand in mute understanding. By just 
two days he had missed that precious privilege. 

In those grief-stricken hours he heard for the first 
time the story of the siege of Van, how for twenty- 
eight days twelve hundred Armenians, armed with 
only three hundred rifles and a scant supply of gun- 
powder and bullets, held out against five thousand 



g6 A Noble Army 

Turks with cannon and no end of ammunition; how 
six thousand Armenian refugees crowded into the 
American compound, bringing all kinds of problems, 
housing, sanitation, food supply, medical treatment; 
how for two days the mission property was bombard- 
ed and every building damaged; and how, when de- 
feat was hourly expected, the Turkish army fled, the 
Russians captured the city, and the siege of Van was 
lifted. Such was the first turn of events in the mili- 
tary history of Van. Under Russian government 
many Armenians ventured out of hiding and went 
back to their homes, while a thousand Turkish women 
and children took their places in the American mis- 
sion. With them came the typhus germs which did 
such unlimited havoc, prostrating five of the mis- 
sionaries on almost the same day and throwing upon 
Mrs. Haynolds, that worn, indomitable body, the 
entire management of the mission. One of the mis- 
sionaries died and, before the other four recovered, 
the Russian army was retreating and the Turkish 
army advancing in greater numbers upon the city. 
There was a wild, mad flight of Russians, Armenians, 
and Americans toward the Russian frontier. The 
barest necessities were collected and piled into carts, 
upon the top of which two of the sick people were 
fastened. In rude conveyances provided by the 
Russian Red Cross the other two patients were 
carried, while Mrs. Raynolds drove a cart packed 
with children and baggage. Three days distant 
from Van the terror descended. On the mountain 
sides were stationed Turkish soldiers who began firing 
upon the helpless procession in the road below. 
Their only hope was a mad dash for safety, and so for 



The Veteran of Van 97 

three hours people ran and horses galloped through 
that terrifying rain of bullets. As a pitiful climax to 
her experience, Mrs. Raynolds jumped from the 
wagon to adjust the harness, fell and broke her leg. 
Russian surgeons set the broken bone and placed her 
in an ambulance for the rest of the way. In ex- 
cruciating pain she jolted for three days over those 
stony roads without a word or sign of complaint, but 
at the journey's end the limit of endurance was 
reached and in a hospital at Tiflis she died. Such 
were the events that had happened during Dr. 
Raynolds* absence. His wife dead, his fellow mis- 
sionaries in flight, and his work of forty years "shat- 
tered to bits," buildings destroyed and people scat- 
tered and killed! 

With unbroken courage Dr. Raynolds returned to 
America and there performed perhaps the most ar- 
duous and appealing labor of all his life. Hither 
and thither he went telling the story of Van to au- 
diences who were strangely quiet under the power of 
his message and his spirit. Many who heard his un- 
faltering voice and saw upon his face the light that 
was not of this world felt a benediction fall upon 
them and knew that they were in the presence of an 
apostle of our Lord, as genuine an apostle as Peter or 
John. 

The following year when the American Relief Com- 
mittee opened work in the Transcaucasus, Dr. Ray- 
nolds was among the first to volunteer for service 
among the thousands of Armenians congregated 
there. At the age of seventy-seven he again crossed 
the ocean and took the long trip overland to Erivan, 
Russia. There a thrilling reunion took place with a 



98 A Noble Army 

group of Van people who had escaped massacre. 
"Joy and sorrow mingled in every heart," said Dr. 
Raynolds, "for in every household were great gaps." 
At Erivan he found children of his former orphans at 
Van, orphans of orphans, and he thanked the Lord 
that He had given him twenty years of orphanage 
work to prepare him for this task of his old age. He 
had already opened his "own pet institution," an 
orphanage for boys who for months had run wild in 
the mountains, when in March, 191 8, came a "bolt 
from the blue," as he described it, an order from the 
American Consul to drop everything, come at once 
to Tiflis, and prepare to leave Russia as speedily as 
possible. There was nothing to do but obey and go 
reluctantly away after a heart-breaking scene with 
his beloved boys. 

From Tiflis, the missionary, twice exiled, travelled 
via China to California where, fittingly, he spent his 
last days making a home for four Van orphans who 
were studying in California University. There, in 
Berkeley, in February, 1920, he died, in the eighty- 
first year of his life and the fifty-first of his missionary 
service. 

Among the many expressions of affection received 
after his death came this tribute signed on behalf of 
the Armenian natives of Van in St. Louis: — "We 
are exceedingly sorry to learn that Dr. Raynolds, 
the beloved father of the Armenians in Van, has 
passed away. We express our deepest gratitude to 
the American Board for the precious service of this 
sainted missionary for the Armenians. In the his- 
tory of Van, Dr. Raynolds will figure conspicuously 
as a Christian gentleman who exercised a far-reaching 



The Veteran of Van 99 

influence on its destiny. The life he lived among us 
spoke loudly for the divine power of the Gospel he 
preached." 

"There can be neither Jew nor Greek, Armenian 
nor American, — for ye are all one in Christ 
Jesus." 



CHAPTER VI. 

Service Stars 

"Greater love hath no man than this 
that a man lay down his life for his 
friends. " 

John 15:13. 






CHAPTER VI, 



Service Stars 



There are many people who go through life asleep, 
though their eyes remain wide open. And there 
are others who drowse along until some voice stirs 
them into wakefulness. It is a sad pity to go through 
life asleep or but half awake, trudging along at the 
same old pace and over the same old road every one 
else goes, measuring your steps by the average gait of 
men. How much better to wake up, rub the dim- 
ness out of your eyes, and take notice that the usual 
pace is too slow or too irregular, and the usual road 
already worn with travel; to see that a new rate of 
speed and new routes are needed and that you per- 
haps may be the scout to set the pace and blaze the 
trail for others to follow! Blest will you be if some- 
time an awakening voice calls to your drowsy spirit 
and summons you forth into service, — the service of 
the new day for God and all mankind. 

There is a great and ancient nation whose long 
sleep has been broken by the sound of a foreign voice, 
the old walled China that dozed behind her barred 
gates for hundreds of years until Europeans and 
Americans came and "stabbed her spirit broad 
awake." At first she stirred but slowly, reluctant 
to break the drowsy spell of centuries, but at last she 
sprang up and marched off at such a speed and along 
such an adventurous road that Western feet could 
hardly keep pace. It was a foreign voice that first 



102 A Noble Army 

roused China out of sleep, but now her own citizens 
are awake, her students in the universities and her 
men in public life, and they are leading the nation 
along new and surprising roads of progress. Among 
the foremost leaders of the new China stands a man 
of matchless reputation, a man of daring, foresight, 
and patriotism, a man of expert ability in his chosen 
work; an outstanding Christian man, probably the 
greatest Christian leader in all China to-day. Who 
is he, this fearless Chinese Christian who draws men 
by the hundred to the God in whom he believes ? A 
preacher? No. A teacher or doctor? No. A car- 
penter or fisherman as were Jesus and His disciples ? 
No. The great Christian leader of China to-day is 
neither preacher nor teacher, but a soldier, an officer 
in the federal army, General Feng Yu Hsiang, com- 
monly known as General Feng. Of an American 
general it was once said, "He is a very good Christian, 
but a very poor general." Of General Feng such a 
comment could not be made, for his brigade is one 
of the star brigades of the army, noted far and wide 
for its discipline and efficiency. 

Once in the boyhood of this man the summoning 
voice was heard and the one who brought the chal- 
lenge little dreamed of the far-reaching work she did 
that day. When a young man of eighteen, Feng Yu 
Hsiang was a private in the imperial army, at that 
disturbed period in Chinese history when the Em- 
press Dowager snatched the reins of government 
from the young emperor, Kuang Hsu, betook herself 
to the imperial palace within the Forbidden City of 
Peking, and deliberately let loose the furious forces of 
hatred against the foreigners. For months a band 



Service Stars 103 

of outlaws, known as Boxers, had been practicing 
their weird rites, with charms and incantations, 
spasms and trances, preparing for the day when 
they could vent their spite upon all foreign people 
in China, missionaries, diplomats, traders, tourists. 
Supported by the Empress and imperial troops, these 
Boxers opened fire upon the foreigners in Peking and 
for nearly two months held them in siege within the 
British Legation, firing shot and shell upon them un- 
til that historic day in August, 1900, when the allied 
armies of England, Russia, France, Germany, and 
the United States marched into Peking and routed 
in dismay Boxers and imperial troops of China. In 
the province of Chihli, in the walled city of Paotingfu 
three groups of American missionaries were caught 
in the hostile plot and no allied armies marched to 
their relief. When the Boxers began their attack, 
the city magistrate sent a guard of soldiers to the 
American Board compound under pretense of pro- 
cecting the foreigners. In point of fact the guard 
had secret orders not to interfere, simply to observe 
what happened and return with the report that the 
mob was too strong for their intervention. 

In that band of soldiers was Feng Yu Hsiang, the 
boy of eighteen whose family had drifted north to 
Paotingfu after floods had swept away their home and 
belongings in Anhwei province. He was a boy natural- 
ly quick and observant, with a glimmer of mischief 
in his eyes and a laughing contempt of missionaries 
at the back of his brain. It was his particular sport 
to pester and tease them on every possible occasion. 
One day he was going along a street where a mis- 
sionary was preaching from the Sermon on the 



104 A Noble Army 

Mount, exhorting his hearers to turn the other cheek, 
and to offer their cloaks, should their coats be taken 
away. "I didn't like that doctrine," said the critical 
young soldier, "so to test it I shouldered the mis- 
sionary's table and started off with it, but the mis- 
sionary did not practise what he preached, and clung 
to the table until I had to let him have it." But on 
this June day in 1900 the Chinese soldier received a 
different impression of missionaries and the religion 
they came to teach. 

The Boxers had surrounded the mission compound 
and were trying to scale the wall and batter down the 
solid wooden gate. Around the gate the attack was 
fiercest and at this point of vantage were stationed 
the soldiers sent to guard the property. There they 
stood, a band of passive sentinels, and in the midst, 
the alert young private, Feng. The fury increased, 
swords and knives slashed at the gate, yells and 
shrieks tore the air; when, at the highest pitch of 
frenzy, the gate swung slowly open and an American 
girl walked out alone and faced the mob. *It was a 
dramatic moment. Hordes of frantic Chinese, with 
swords and knives and streaming red banners, and 
standing calmly before them, an easy victim for 
their rage, this frail, unprotected American girl! 
Astonished at her appearance the Boxers became 
strangely quiet and listened to what she had to say. 
It was on thiswise she spoke: "Why do you seek to 
kill us? v You must know we are your friends, that 
we have come here solely to do you good. All these 
years we have lived among you we have visited in 
your homes, we have taught your children in our 
schools, we have saved the lives of many of your sick 



Service Stars 105 

in our hospital. We have only love for you in our 
hearts. And you have death in your hearts for us. 
I beg you to go away and spare the lives of us mis- 
sionaries and the Chinese Christians who are with 
us." There was a breathless silence as she ceased 
speaking and waited for a reply. But no reply was 
given and she went on to make her last appeal: 
"If you will not spare the lives of my companions, 
then, I entreat you, take my life in their stead. I 
offer myself to you now. I am only a woman, de- 
fenceless in your hands. Take me if you will, but 
save, oh save, the others." The mob had now be- 
come intensely quiet, even solemn, and one by one, 
or in groups of two and three, they went stealthily 
away, leaving the compound deserted and safe. 

At his post of observation stood Feng, the soldier, 
meditating upon what he had seen and heard and say- 
ing to himself, "There is a woman who is a real 
Christian. She practices every word she says. I 
never dreamed there could be a person so full of love 
for others. She was ready to give her life for their 
sakes. She is like the Christ of the Christians, who, 
they say, suffered death on the cross to save the world 
from sin. The time is coming when I shall have to 
be a Christian. I cannot resist a religion like this." 

Awed by what he had seen, the boy went away to 
obey a new order from the magistrate which led him 
through the city to the Presbyterian Mission outside 
the north gate. There he saw the mob surround the 
house where missionaries and children had taken re- 
fuge, threatening, bombarding, using every means to 
force the captives out that they might rob and mal- 
treat them, and at last, setting fire to the building, 



io6 A Noble Army 

dooming the helpless folk to death. Five American 
men and women and three small children perished in 
the flames that day. In Feng's mind the wonder 
grew and stirred, that a religion could enable its 
followers to face persecution and death without a 
murmur of reproach. 

The next few days brought a reign of terror to 
Paotingfu. The spell of Mary Morrill's appearance 
at the mission gate to plead for the lives of her com- 
panions had lost its power over the crazed minds of 
the Boxers and they returned in fiercer mood than 
before to finish their deadly work. It was Sunday 
morning when they came, pounding, shrieking, slash- 
ing at the gate, which no American girl opened to 
plead for mercy. £. Instead, Mary Morrill and Annie 
Gould, her companion, had gone to their rooms to 
read their Bible and pray and to array themselves 
in white in preparation for the solemn hour of death. 
Beyond the wall Boxers yelled and fought, and, failing 
to break through the solid wood of the gate, built a 
fire which soon consumed the last barrier and ad- 
mitted the raving mob. There, near the entrance, 
stood Horace Tracy Pitkin, that splendid young 
American, whose life and early death have inspired 
thousands at home and abroad. Had he chosen, he 
might have saved his life by flight on horseback in 
the night, but he had refused to leave the women of 
the mission unprotected. With his revolver he 
held the mob for a time at bay, but was soon over- 
powered and slashed to death with knives and swords. 
Rushing on to the room where the two women were 
hiding, the Boxers seized and dragged them out, 
pulling Miss Morrill along for some distance by her 



Service Stars 107 

hair. Releasing this brutal grasp, they permitted 
her to walk to her death between two rough escorts, 
which she did with calm and unfaltering gait. Along 
the way were crowds of onlookers, some of whom 
clutched the garments of the two women and tore 
them in tatters. Whenever she could, Mary Morrill 
spoke words of help to the people and once she gave 
a piece of silver to a person in need. This woman 
who walked composedly to a sure death was the girl, 
who, in her New England home and in China, had 
acknowledged herself lacking in natural courage. 
She was often sprightly and humorous in talk, but at 
the heart of her was a shrinking fear. Only a year 
before the Boxer outbreak she had confessed to a 
friend, "I am so timid. I have so little physical 
courage that, if the supreme test came here in China 
and my life were threatened, I'm afraid I should 
turn and run." And here she was, "From weakness 
made strong," transformed by the Power within her. 
Again the soldier Feng would have said, had he 
known, "What a religion is this!" 

Into a Buddhist temple in the southeast corner of 
the city Miss Morrill and Miss Gould were thrust, 
while their captors went away to secure orders. 
Upon the sacred hours of that Sabbath forenoon we 
may not intrude, but we may surmise what took place 
in the gloomy Buddhist temple and we may know for 
certain what Power held them quiet through the 
terrifying ordeal. In the afternoon they with three 
other missionaries were fastened together with ropes 
and led in single file, like galley slaves or convicts 
in chains, to the place of execution outside the city 
gate.^ On this pitiful march people moaned as Miss 



108 A Noble Army 

Morrill passed, saying, "She was a good woman. 
What a pity she has to die!" At the southeast 
corner of the city wall, between the wall and the 
moat, she and her companions were beheaded, ac- 
cording to the usual mode of execution in China. 

With the death of Mary Morrill the life story of 
General Feng begins. Ordered north to the vicinity 
of Peking he had another encounter with foreign 
Christians. Afflicted with a distressing ulcer he 
consulted two Chinese doctors each of whom pro- 
nounced his case serious and demanded sixty dollars 
for his cure. Their greed disgusted him and he re- 
sorted to a missionary hospital for treatment. 
Upon recovering his health he inquired the charge 
for his care, whereupon the doctor replied, "Nothing; 
only I want you to remember that God in Heaven 
loves you and sent me to heal you." The soldier 
left the hospital impressed anew by the eccentric 
generosity of the Christians. Another time in Man- 
churia he was inoculated against the plague by a 
missionary doctor who refused payment in somewhat 
the same language. 

By 191 1 Feng had passed the rank of lieu tenant and 
reached that of major, being stationed with his men 
in the city of Peking. In that year Dr. John R. 
Mott, a commanding Christian leader who belongs 
as much to the whole wide world as to his own United 
States, was holding great mass meetings in China to 
lead men unto the world Saviour, Jesus Christ. Im- 
pelled by some force within him, Major Feng was 
drawn into these meetings, there to make the great 
decision — the' greatest decision possible in human 
life — to live for God instead of self. The impulse 



Service Stars 109 

was first born within him that July day in 1900 when 
he stood at the mission gate at Paotingfu and watch- 
ed Mary Morrill as she faced the Boxer mob and 
offered her life in sacrifice for others. That memory, 
blending with the ringing appeal of Dr. Mott, led 
him to take his stand as soldier in the ranks of a new 
Commander, the Lord Jesus Christ. If ever there 
was an effective soldier in the Christian army of the 
world, that soldier is General Feng of China. 

In the year 191 2 the old empire of China became a 
republic, a radical change which has not yet produced 
a united nation, for North and South are still in hos- 
tile camps. Advanced to the rank of brigadier- 
general of the Northern or Federal army — the rank 
he now holds — General Feng was sent to capture a 
strategic position in Szechwan province. By skilful 
tactics his artillery demolished the only bridge across 
the river and cut the Southern army off from relief 
or retreat. Recognizing their plight, the Southern 
commander surrendered and his troops were lined 
up as captives before the victorious general of the 
Northern army. What did he proceed to do with 
his prisoners of war? Send them into a prison camp, 
or keep them to do menial work for his army? 
Neither. He talked to the downcast soldiers like an 
older brother, explaining the political situation and 
the urgent need for all Chinese to stand together in 
the national crisis instead of wasting their strength 
fighting one another. "I'm going to let you keep 
your weapons," said he, "and I'll give each man 
among you enough money to get home if you all 
agree to quit fighting and go away."' To each 
officer he gave ten dollars, to each private, five. So 



no A Noble Army 

overcome were the Southern soldiers by the hand- 
some treatment of the enemy general that they ac- 
tually fell on the ground, weeping. By this deed of 
General Feng not only the rebellious city, but the 
entire province lost its fighting temper. It is easy 
to see how the new religion had influenced the mili- 
tary tactics of the Chinese general. 

Sometime later his brigade was stationed in Anh- 
wei province when a division of the Northern army 
met defeat at Changte, Hunan. General Feng 
received orders to relieve the distressed army and 
take the city. As he approached the scene of battle 
he sent two missionaries under a flag of truce with 
this message to the Southern commander, "I have 
orders to take the city and shall take it. You just 
leave and go south to avoid loss of life." Knowing 
with whom he was dealing the Southern commander 
lost no time in moving his army to a point fifty miles 
distant. Since that day General Feng has been in 
command in Changte, his troops stationed there and 
at Tao Yuan, and he himself the military governor 
of the whole province of Hunan, with a population 
of seven or eight millions, as many as the whole na- 
tion of Belgium. 

Under General Feng's rule in Hunan the most 
sweeping reforms ever known in China and, for that 
matter,in America, have not only been proposed, but 
vigorously carried out. In the two cities where the 
army is encamped, all theatres, gambling dens, mor- 
phine and opium resorts have been closed and kept 
closed. >, Theatres have been turned into schools, 
workshops, and halls for religious meetings. For 
victims of the opium and morphine habit the general 



Service Stars in 

has opened sanitariums to which they are committed 
by law. What would happen, do you think, if a 
man like General Feng should become governor of a 
state or mayor of a city in the United States, a man 
who literally fears no one, and who does what he 
believes to be right regardless of opposition or con- 
sequences? When his army first came to Hunan the 
inhabitants were disturbed lest the Northern soldiers 
work mischief among them. But the fact was, that 
so many of the nine thousand men had become Chris- 
tians under the influence of their general that every- 
body in the vicinity was entirely safe. 

In the military camps at Changte and Tao Yuan 
the most remarkable discipline prevails. Smoking, 
drinking, gambling, profanity are forbidden and 
are said not to exist in camp. English visitors de- 
clare that they have never seen smoking or drinking 
nor heard a bad word spoken in General Feng's 
camps. They exclaim in amazement over the clean- 
liness of the barracks, each bed protected with a 
mosquito net and scrupulously neat; each gun, bay- 
onet, buckle, and strap polished until it shines. Such 
a clean and shiny spot in China is a striking contrast 
to the usual condition of dirt and disorder. 

Athletics are a popular feature of camp life, the 
officers setting an example with their feats on hori- 
zontal bars and in obstacle races. General Feng 
himself is a man of fine athletic build, a soldier in 
stature as well as brain. Many of his officers wear 
prizes won in route marches, one man having led 
his company with all their kit on a march of forty 
miles in seven hours! -With all the discipline and 
efficiency of the brigade, there is a sense of enthusiasm 



ii2 A Noble Army 

V. 

and freedom. The soldiers adore their general and, 
although still young, he is like a father to his men, 
calling them his "boys" and planning not only for 
their immediate welfare, but for their future when 
they reach the age of retirement from army life. 
He does not want his men to turn bandits, and 
so he has established factories where they may learn 
to make socks, towels, and clothing, bind books and 
weave rattan chairs. It would be hard to find an- 
other army camp in the world with the morale and 
efficiency of this camp in Hunan, China. 

The explanation of its high standing goes straight 
back to the character of the man in command. That 
man makes it his aim to lead every officer and soldier 
of his brigade into the friendship of his Master, 
Jesus Christ. His measure of success is tremendous, 
for it has been stated that nine out of ten in his camp 
are Christian men. The secret of this vast awaken- 
ing is the touch laid upon the men by the general's 
own life, for he himself is the most genuine and thor- 
ough convert to the religion he commends to others. 
One night a missionary by the name of Goforth — 
and what name could be better for a minister of the 
Gospel ? — was conducting a service which had deeply 
stirred his hearers with a sense of their sin. At the 
conclusion of his address General Feng began to 
pray, but broke down in confessing his own and his 
country's sins. Officers and men were bowed with 
weeping during that service of prayer, at the close 
of which their general pled with them to consecrate 
their lives to the service of the Lord Christ A It is 
General Feng's custom to begin with prayer all con- 
ferences with staff officers, calling upon Colonel Lu, 



Service Stars ■ 113 

or Colonel Chang or Major Wen to pray. In the 
general's private room is a corner curtained off, where 
he meets with officers and privates for prayer. 

The English missionary, Mr. Goforth, declares 
that he never spoke to such eager and attentive lis- 
teners as these soldiers in Hunan. And never did 
he find men so enthusiastic over Bible study. Dur- 
ing his stay at camp he was handed a list of those who 
were ready to join a Bible class and eighty-six names 
were enrolled. The hour for meeting was six o'clock 
in the morning and at that hour there assembled in 
the theatre not only eighty-six, but hundreds. Chris- 
tian hymns are the popular army songs in the Hunan 
camps, and Bibles and hymn books are found in 
nearly every soldier's outfit. 

In a recent year Mr. Goforth baptized two hundred 
and seventy-five soldiers at one time, the service last- 
ing two and a half hours. The next day at the other 
camp he baptized two hundred and thirty-two, all of 
them commissioned or non-commissioned officers. 
At the close of the baptismal service he spoke to the 
men after this manner, "You have now confessed the 
Lord Jesus Christ by baptism. Suppose persecution 
again broke out as in 1900. I have on my body the 
marks of Boxer swords, and many of , your country- 
men died for Jesus that year. If such persecution 
as that arose, would you slink quietly away and not 
own your Saviour?" 

"Never," cried hundreds of voices in unison. 
"Never, we will die for Him." 

The interrelations of human lives are mysterious 
and impressive. An American girl in the city of 
Portland, Maine, becomes interested in the people 



ii4 A Noble Army 

of another race through teaching a Bible class for the 
Chinese of her city. She volunteers for service in 
their remote country and is assigned for duty to the 
city of Paotingfu. There she teaches in a boarding 
school for girls and performs another work even 
dearer to her heart, visiting the secluded, untaught 
Chinese women behind the walls of their homes. 
Stupid and brilliant, unkempt and tidy, she loves 
them all with a love which comes only from Heaven 
to bless and inspire human hearts. But her ministry 
to the women and girls of China was of brief duration, 
for she had lived but ten years among them when 
that hurricane of human hatred broke loose, the 
Boxer rebellion. But "having loved her own, she 
loved them unto the end" with that "greater love" 
by which "a man lays down his life for his friends." 
At the moment when her sacrificial love was revealed, 
the supreme service of Mary Morrill's life was ren- 
dered, for at that moment a new soul was born into 
the light, and from that birth may come in time the 
birth of a nation, for the awakening in General 
Feng's army bids fair to spread through large areas 
jf the country when his soldiers shall scatter to their 
instant homes. 

"The Son of God goes forth to war, 
A kingly crown to gain; 
His blood-red banner streams afar, 
Who follows in His train?" 



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